Emergency Bereavement Service

EDM number 893 in 2004-05, proposed by Fabian Hamilton on 10/03/2005.

That this House calls upon the Government to take urgent steps to fulfil its promise, made in January 2002, to end the wasteful and destructive bureaucracy which is forcing the collapse of the astonishing achievements of the Alice Barker Trust; agrees that the Trust has been a great strength in this country and is the type of voluntary sector organisation celebrated in the last Queen's Speech; calls upon the Government not to create temporary graves in public cemeteries until the Trust's proposal for a new legal framework for voluntary sector burials is in place for permanent graves in permanent nature reserves, without the need for any expansion of Government bureaucracy, but with ultimate power resting with any Secretary of State; notes that the Trust has demonstrated how public services can be joined-up in imaginative and unexpected ways, that emotional well-being can be protected through empowerment during critical times of bereavement and other potential emotional emergencies, and how standards can be driven up in ways which reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and expenditure on the National Health Service and other services; further notes that the Trust cannot survive without the unparalleled expertise on relevant law of John Bradfield, its full-time honorary adviser and researcher since 1990; and urges the Government to put in place a new law as a matter or urgency to prevent him accepting unrelated paid work in this country or abroad, as that would deprive the nation of a free public service which no-one else is capable of providing.

This motion has been signed by a total of 38 MPs.