Victorian-style 'paupers' funerals' could return to Britain as families struggle to pay costs of £2,000 for simple ceremony

State help for funerals has been capped at £700 for 16 years, which a Commons work and pensions select committee said did not come close to the costs involved

The average price of a funeral was £3,700 last year (Corbis)

Britain could witness the return of Victorian-style “paupers’ funerals” without urgent action to reform the system of state help towards the cost of burials and cremations, MPs will warn.

In one case a bereaved mother was forced to freeze her son’s body for months while she saved enough for his funeral, the Commons work and pensions select committee said.

Families who cannot afford a funeral receive help towards the costs, including a £700 payment covering the expense of a coffin, hearse, funeral director and flowers and a separate payment to cover grave, burial or crematorium fees.

The committee said the £700 payment had been capped for 16 years and did not come close to the costs involved. The average price of a funeral was £3,700 last year and around £2,000 for a simple ceremony.

Frank Field, its chairman, said: “Funeral payments for those who can prove they are entitled, and that is a very and uncertain onerous process, now fall far short of covering even a basic funeral.

“We heard clear evidence of the distressing circumstances and debt this is leading people into at a time when they are grieving and vulnerable. We do not want a return to the spectre of miserable ‘pauper’s funerals’.”

Social Fund funeral payments are made following around seven per cent of deaths in Britain, according to the government.

The MPs also attacked the rules governing bereavement benefits as outdated because they do not apply to parents who were living together but were unmarried.

“Penalising a child on the grounds of their parents’ marital status is as unjust as it is anachronistic. The costs involved to right this wrong are small and the Government should do so as soon as possible,” Mr Field said.

The system of bereavement benefits is made up of three payments – a one-off Bereavement Payment, a Bereavement Allowance and a Widowed Parent’s Allowance. The government plans to replace them with a single Bereavement Support Payment (BSP) from April 2017.

The committee called on ministers to follow the lead of the Scottish government and conduct a review of financial support for the cost of burials, cremations and funerals.

A Department of Work and Pension spokesman said: “We are modernising bereavement benefits, introducing a simpler and fairer scheme that will better assist people in what can be an extremely difficult time.”

He said the planned new BSP would provide a higher lump sum payment than is currently offered and more people would qualify to receive it and spending on bereavement benefits under the new system was estimated to be £33m a year higher than under the current arrangements.