Bereavement benefits

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than 20,000 bereaved families can now claim financial support once restricted to married couples and civil partners. The payments worth up to £10,000 have been extended to cover all couples who lived together and claimed child benefit.

Eight years ago the government said it would introduce funding for university and higher education that is comparable with the principle of Islamic finance. So when will it happen?

And what should banks do to protect problem gamblers.

GUESTS: Omar Shaikh - Advisory Board Member UK Islamic Finance Council Professor Sharon Collard, Research Director at the Personal Finance research Centre at the University of Bristol Danny Cheetham - anti-gambling campaigner

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Production Co-ordinator: Janet Staples Researcher: Stefania Okereke Producer: Joe Kent Editor: Alex Lewis

Transcript

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0:00.0	In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers.
0:08.0	But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA
0:12.0	was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife.
0:18.0	Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? When lies are still being told to this day,
0:24.0	who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start and I'm with the IRA.
0:28.5	Steakknife. Listen first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast, a protest and a parliamentary debate, but still the
0:43.7	government won't say when it will introduce a student loan system that fits with Islamic
0:48.2	beliefs. A report says the banks and lenders should change their ways to take account of the
0:53.6	needs of vulnerable
0:54.6	people with gambling addictions. But first, the government has announced it will extend
0:59.7	the right to bereavement benefits to couples who are just living together, not married,
1:04.6	or in a civil partnership, but only if they had children when one of them died.
1:08.7	Bereavement support payment is worth up to £9,800 for a surviving parent,
1:15.0	but at the moment it can only be claimed if the couple were married or civil partnered. The major change
1:20.7	that's coming follows two court cases, one as long ago as 2018, both of which ruled that the
1:26.8	current law breaches the human rights of the children.
1:30.4	It's not their fault after all that their parents chose not to formalise their relationship.
1:36.0	The government estimates the change could benefit 22,000 families over five years throughout the UK.
1:43.7	One parent who will benefit from this change is Martin, whose partner Paul died suddenly in March last year, leaving her to look after her two children aged 15 and 10.
1:54.0	Martin, how did you react when you heard this news on Thursday?
1:58.0	Just pure relief and so pleased for so many people.
2:03.9	We've had such financial stress, concerns about how we're going to pay the bills.
	...

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