Terminally ill man's family will lose £50,000 if he dies after midnight

If Alan dies before midnight tonight, his family will receive £50,000 more from the government than if he dies after that time, under changes to bereavement benefits.

Alan (not his real name), who has incurable cancer, is one of many terminally ill people whose families will be affected by cuts to payments for the bereaved, a policy he described as ‘utterly callous and savage.’

He said: ‘At this point in one’s life you’re contemplating death and you want to go out of this world with some dignity, with some grace, with some peace of mind. Not full of financial anxiety, feeling as if the Government has just taken money away from you that you hard earned legitimately.’

Speaking on the Victoria Derbyshire programme, Alan called on the House of Lords to step up and hold the Government to account, stopping the legislation coming into effect.

But Labour’s Baroness Hollis, speaking on the same programme this morning, said that House, held back by mountains of Brexit legislation, was powerless on the matter.

‘It’s too late because it’s now law,’ she said.

‘It’s not going to happen in the House of Lords because Brexit is going to take all the oxygen out of primary legislation, which would be the normal way that the House of Lords would get a change of mind.’

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Instead, she urged families affected to contact their MP, encouraging them to put pressure on the Government to alter the new measures.

The benefit cuts, a hangover from George Osborn’s budget in 2015, will see payments to bereaved parents cut from £112 a week to £80 a week, and limited to a period of 18 months. Currently the payments continue until the youngest child leaves full-time education, which could extend to a maximum of 10 years.

The initial lump sum for families will increase from £2,000 to £3,500.

For Alan, who has a wife and two children aged 10 and 14, the changes mean the money his family will receive will be slashed from around £58,000 to around £6,300.

He said: ‘The new calculation shocked me. My life is now deemed to be worth £6,300.’

But Theresa May defended the cuts as ‘fair to taxpayers’.

Speaking as she travelled to the Gulf to discuss trade, the Prime Minister said: ‘The new bereavement support is going to replace a number of other payments that were there in the past.

‘The aim of the new payment is to make sure it covers, at the time it’s most crucially needed, the extra costs that are experienced following bereavement.’

Charities have estimated that 75% of bereaved families will be worse off, and 90% will receive support for a shorter period of time.