My Lords, we move on to a different section of the Bill on bereavement benefits. In moving Amendment 59, I wish to speak also to Amendments 60, 61 and, very briefly, to Amendment 66.
I am unhappy about some aspects of these proposals. I know that they have been out to consultation, as, obviously, I have read the consultation documents, but I wonder whether it was wise to go for a one-size-fits-all approach in the name of alleged simplicity. The background notes go back to our policies in 1925, presumably in the belief that this shows we need to overhaul the system, but, actually, we did review and restructure it in 2000. Why did we structure it in the way we did? I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I talk about widows rather than deceased spouses or partners.
Currently, widows receive a £2,000 lump sum. We recognised, as have the current Government, that you need money immediately to pay for funeral costs and to tide you over the couple of months while the deceased spouse’s income or, alternatively, childcare are not available and before alternative benefit income, if appropriate, is established. As UC, for example, can be paid in monthly arrears, it could be two months before any money is flowing to the bereaved spouse or partner, so we produced a lump sum. We then sought to support widowed parents with children while the youngest was on child benefit: that is, normally up to age 16. At the time that was consistent with the income support rule for single parents with a taxable benefit. The widowed parent’s allowance is now worth £108 a week—a little less than BSP but more than income support, as it is NI-based. It is not means-tested and no work conditionality is attached. The number of new widowed parents claiming the allowance varies between 50,000 and 100,000 a year. As far as I can see, there is no particular pattern to it. Currently, widowed parents claim their allowance on average for five to six years. Not surprisingly, those with younger children claim it for longer—around nine to 10 years. Only 3.6%—less than 4%—claim it for a year or less.
The Government, to my dismay, while increasing the lump sum to £5,000, are proposing that widowed parents should receive this financial support not until the youngest child is 16 or even 12, but for one year only irrespective of the age of the child, at £400 a month. I believe that this is quite unacceptable. For most, the financial loss will be substantial. Some 88% of widows in work with children will be worse off; 50% of those not in work will be worse off. To put it another way, any widow with children who would have claimed for two years or more, usually because of the age of their children, will in future be worse off. That loss could be £50,000 if eligibility were retained while the child carried child benefit. Instead, within a year, she will probably have to work longer hours if she is in work just to make good her financial loss at the selfsame time that her children need her. Children do not adjust in a year. In my experience they are stressed and distressed for many years longer and need more, not less, care from the surviving parent. My children were grown up when bereavement hit and even then it was very hard, but friends who lost a spouse when the children were young found that their children had
nightmares and returned to bedwetting. Those parents experienced broken nights and witnessed their children’s clinging fear of losing their other parent, school phobia, challenging behaviour, miscellaneous, unexplained small illnesses and symptoms of depression. They found that their children needed much extra support, stability and attention as well as affection. The widowed parent—a sole carer and earner—may have to extend her working hours to make good the loss of income at just the time when she needs to be more available to them, perhaps to change childcare, move house and, consequently, change their school.
The more generous working parent’s allowance not only helped to replace his income but could also allow a working mother the financial flexibility to adjust her hours to care for her children to enable them to settle into the new patterns of life that they now experience. Given that few widows claim the full credit that they could, they are making a wise decision for themselves and are in no sense seeking to milk the system. Are we really so desperate for money that we need to take it away from grieving widows with deeply distressed children?
As for work conditionality, if widowed parents are on UC, it is proposed that they are brought within work conditionality after six months. Again, that is quite unacceptable. I am baffled by this lack of empathy or understanding. Of course, if she wants to go back to work—as many of us do, and did—that is fine and we should support her but to impose work conditionality whether she feels ready for work or not seems unbelievably harsh. We talk about advice and guidance and a friendly interview with Jobcentre Plus staff, but the power lies with the staff. The Minister is giving huge discretion to a young single member of staff, however well intentioned—I am sure that they are—but with probably no personal experience of bereavement.
I would not want that. The more, I am afraid, we hear of the culture of targets at Jobcentre Plus, the retraining or demotion of staff who do not meet their targets, and the resulting heavy pressure on claimants who are still numb and barely functioning to go back to work, the more we should all worry. I appreciate and welcome the fact that the Minister has recently offered further consultation to discuss work conditionality and the training of staff with the voluntary groups who support widowed mothers, and I hope that work conditionality pressures, at least, will be properly relaxed.
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Finally, the third element is that we provided in 2000 a one-year bereavement allowance for those aged over 45. The current Government, according to their notes, seem to think that 45 was an arbitrary figure and that it could well have been 50. It was not. I was one of those involved in those discussions—we did it to help older widows without dependent children, and the age of 45 was about the time when the youngest child no longer brought in child benefit. At 45, for a year, a widow would get some £33 a week, rising currently, in 7% steps, to £101 a week at 54. She would have a year to give her time to deal with her grief.
However, more to the point—this is why we did it—such widows are older, as the Government’s own tables show, and their numbers are growing by around
10% a year. Therefore, 16,000 people without children become widowed each year at 45, and 108,000 a year at 54. What is key is that younger widows and widowers, with or without children, are more likely to have been in work at the point of their spouse’s death—three-fifths of them. The death, although often due to a heart attack, or lung or breast cancer, was far more likely to be a sudden, unexpected death, such as an accident at work or in the car. An older widow without dependent children was less likely to be in work—barely half of such widows were. That is because she—it is twice as likely to be she than he—was more likely to have been her spouse’s carer, because he was more likely to have died following a terminal illness such as cancer or heart disease that often required full-time care.
As anyone who has nursed a spouse through a terminal illness knows, it may mean two or three years of heavy end-caring. Apart from the grief, it is physically exhausting even for those who are fairly fit. It wipes you out. It is hard work by day and broken sleep at night—you are never off duty. Your own physical health often breaks down as well. You keep going until his death and then you cannot. You need your own stress-free convalescence. You need physical as well as emotional recovery, which is what that year-long bereavement allowance provided. Its cash value was age-related—more for the older widow, where it approached BSP rates—and was tapered down to a useful supplement to the younger widow of 45, who was more likely to be either in the labour market or able to re-enter it.
It is entirely reasonable that we should review the benefits, given changes in the rates in the rest of the social security system over the past 15 years. I do not object to that, but the nature of bereavement and the problems and challenges that it throws up to the bereaved spouse have not changed. It is merely our assumptions that have apparently changed regarding what we can expect from the surviving spouse. Older widows are not more healthy and able to cope than they were in 2000. Younger widows’ children are not less distressed than they were in 2000 or regressing in behaviour. Work conditionality after just six months is not a favour to them, as the government papers seem to suggest; it just adds more unwanted, inappropriate and harsh pressure. We should treat widows and widowed parents at least as well as kinship carers, who, wisely, have a full year free from work conditionality while the children settle in—hence these amendments.
The first allows the widowed parent a longer period of financial support, either for three years or until the youngest child is seven. We estimate that this should not add more than 10% to the financial package for bereavement, and voluntary groups are happy to work with the Minister to make it cost-neutral. We are told that widows can move on to and be eligible for UC but that is, of course, a means-tested benefit, and some widowed parents may not be eligible for it.
The second amendment seeks to identify those widows or widowers who have been engaged in substantial caring work for their terminally ill spouse, as reflected in their eligibility for carer’s allowance or carer’s credit. It would be easy to identify them, whatever their age, and regulations could then provide for an appropriate period of financial support.
Finally, there should be an extended period, coterminous with financial support for bereavement, in which both widows and widowers are not subject to work conditionality, as I doubt whether a widow will be fit or able to work if she is not already employed at the point of bereavement. I doubt whether there is little or any cost to this amendment. I beg to move.