§ Mr. RendelTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the cost of extending the Bereavement Allowance to unmarried partners. [78032]
§ Angela Eagle[holding answer 22 March 1999]: It is proposed that Bereavement Allowance will be paid for six months only to widows and widowers aged 45 or over on bereavement who have no dependent children. Entitlement to Bereavement Allowance will be based on the deceased spouse's National Insurance contribution record.
It would be very difficult to establish who were "partners". As a result, there is limited information available on the circumstances of cohabiting partners and we are able to provide only broad estimates of the gross costs of extending it to unmarried cohabiting partners. We estimate this would cost less than £5 million in the first year, and less than £25 million in 2020–21.
It is estimated that extending basic bereavement benefits to unmarried partners would cost around £100 million per year by 2020–21.
Notes:
1. The estimates are provided by the Government Actuary's Department and do not include means-tested benefit offsets.
833W2. The estimates are based on 1998–99 benefit rates. Estimates for 2020 are rounded to the nearest £25 million.
3. There would also be an additional cost to Retirement Pension (RP) which has not been estimated.