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2.56 pm
Mr. Michael Jabez Foster (Hastings and Rye): The Government's proposals to ensure that widows and widowers receive significant help when they most need it is to be applauded. The present provision that we inherited failed to provide the right amount of help at the right time. It is the time shortly after a bereavement, when distress is
coupled with extra cost, that needs are at their peakand when help is required. I therefore support the Government's proposal for a doubling of the immediate help through the bereavement payment because that will be of great assistance at the time when it is most needed. Also important is the fact that it will be paid to widowers as well as widows.
However, neither the present provision nor the Government's proposals deal with the small group of widows who face perilous financial loss at a time when the enormity of their situation is at its worst. I speak of those recent widows who receive the support of widowed mothers allowance and then lose their child.
The current provisions rightly provide significant support for young mothers--those under 45--who have children to support at the time of their husband's death. Such support continues until the child ends full-time education and then, depending on the age of the widow, a widows pension may be claimed or, if the widow is under 45, the provision ends. However, the changes can be planned for, as there is some certainty about when the child will leave the nest.
There are some widows, however--no doubt, a very small number--who suffer grievous financial and personal loss when they suffer not only the loss of a spouse but the subsequent death of a child. Such a tragedy befell my constituent, Mrs. Norma Haigh.
Mrs. Haigh was just 40 when her husband died and she was granted widowed mothers allowance. Up until earlier this year, with a part-time job from which she brought in £136 per week and the widowed mothers allowance amounting to £103 and child benefit of £11, she was able to support herself and her 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, albeit not to the same standard as if her husband had lived. Mrs. Haigh had an older son in the family who had completed full-time education but who unfortunately was out of work. He at least had the stability of a home in which to live following the death of his father.
On 1 January, Rachel was rushed to hospital and died in the operating theatre in tragic circumstances. No one could have expected that otherwise healthy child to have died in that way. My constituent was distraught following the death of her husband and that second tragedy and was too ill to return to work full time. She did manage to work for 15 hours a week, but, in consequence, her income was reduced to £54. Her widowed mothers allowance of £103 and child benefit of £11 ceased on the very day of her daughter's death. Having had an income of more than £250 a week, she was thus reduced at the time of her greatest need to an income of just £54. There was no provision for the funeral expenses or for the extra help needed at such a time. The previous Government's provisions did not cover that tragic circumstance. I am not suggesting that the previous Government intended to deny help to this small minority of needy individuals, but I am absolutely sure that the present Government would not wish for that small but needy group to be left without support.
I am asking not for compensation for bereavement but for practical and immediate help in such tragic circumstances. In particular, I have two requests to put to my hon. Friend the Minister. First, will he ensure that, when such situations arise--when either a mother or,
now, a father is left with a double bereavement such as I have described--there should be an immediate bereavement payment, such as is paid under the new provisions, to assist with the funeral expenses? Secondly, will he ensure that there is a period of protection of perhaps six months from the loss of the widowed parents allowance to help overcome the immediate trauma?
A period of six months would probably be sufficient, as people's circumstances change while they adjust to bereavement. Because of the rarity of the situation, the costs to the Exchequer would be minimal; but, to the affected parent, the assistance may just make life worth living.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
I shall make a brief contribution to what has been an interesting debate. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) for the way in which he introduced the debate and ensured that it covered a wide spectrum of issues.
We are not holding the Government to account for one specific action in relation to widows, but we are worried about the cumulative effect of many different aspects of Government policy. When taken together, they make life very difficult for a particular group of people who often are not best equipped, either financially or emotionally after a bereavement, to make good the loss.
We do not damn the Government's intentions. The Government, when formulating social security policy, probably do not intend to be discriminatory against widows or any other group. Nor do we wish to damn all the Government's initiatives in that regard. We support many of them, and the extension of existing provision to include widowers is especially welcome, although we might quibble about its precise terms. We also welcome the promised additional support for carers although, given that the arrangements are not yet in place, it is stretching the point somewhat to claim that that is evidence of the Government's generous support for widows. We are entitled to wait until those arrangements are implemented before we hang out the flags.
The Government seem to have a blind spot in this matter, which is why the debate is so important. We must make it clear to those of our constituents who are widows or widowers that they are not forgotten, and that they are an important group whom we shall support in our arguments today.
It is rare for me to agree with the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), and spurious feminism is the last thing in the world of which the Conservative party could be accused. However, the hon. Gentleman had a case when he identified some wishful thinking in the Government's policy of social evolution rather than revolution. That evolution is under way, but it is not complete. The present sociological and demographic position is that many widows are not given the independent means and employment prospects that we want them to have. The truth is that they have often been placed at a disadvantage throughout their lives by the
social conditions in which they have lived, and that they are disadvantaged now by the arrangements governing what happens after the death of a spouse.
I wish to concentrate on the changes to SERPS and the undoubted mis-selling of pensions using terms that were anything but precise. That is a Government responsibility and a matter of enormous consequence to constituents. I have received very many letters on that subject. I shall not read them out, but I will name some of my correspondents. They include Mr. Deasington of Queen Camel, Mr. Michael of Bower Hinton, Mr. Smith of Milborne Port, Mr. Brosnan of Frome, Mrs. Stonell of Frome and Mr. Cochran of Henstridge.
The people who wrote used almost exactly the same terms, and it is interesting that most of them are men--husbands worried about what will happen to their wives after they die. The letters share one of two emotions: either devastation at the unpicking, through no fault of their own, of what the writers had arranged on their spouses' behalf; or anger at the degree to which they had been misled, right up to a few weeks ago, by the advice that they had received.
People often make SERPS contributions over a lifetime. The men who wrote to me expected that those contributions would mean that, after their demise, the arrangements for their spouses would be satisfactory. That expectation has now been dashed. They feel that the Government have reneged on what amounted to a genuine contract.
I feel sympathy for Ministers, because clearly this matter is not of their doing. The fault lies with the previous Government, who should have made the appropriate dispositions at the time and should have maintained them in the intervening years. However, that does not alter the facts facing the people who write to hon. Members of all parties. They are not interested in where the fault lies. Their problem is that, through no fault of their own, they have been left in an impossible position. They made the simple mistake of trusting the Government, and assuming that advice from the Department of Social Security was good. That advice was not good.
The problem of SERPS for widows is especially difficult. The demographic information shows that widows are among the poorest pensioners, as the relevant statistics prove. Many widows do not take up their income support entitlement. We may wish that they did and that the mechanisms were better at encouraging them to do so, but the fact is that they do not. Women tend, in general, to have lower pension entitlements than men--another example of the disadvantage that widows suffer. In addition, people who work under the SERPS system tend to have lower lifetime earnings and are therefore the least able to cope with the financial shock that has been described.
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