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There are few more vulnerable moments in life than the days before and after the loss of a loved one. The rituals of farewell surrounding a funeral matter deeply. Hence the horrified public reaction to the crimes of Robert Bush in Hull. Bush was sentenced last week to 20 years in prison for 67 offences including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial.
When his business, Legacy Independent Funeral Services, was searched, police found multiple bodies decomposing on racks. Bush had returned the wrong ashes to families, stolen money donated to charities and spent more than £42,000 on holidays over 12 years. In court, relatives revealed the distress caused; David Gorbutt, who scattered a stranger’s ashes in place of his wife’s, described feeling “abused”.
The Competition and Markets Authority proposed tighter regulation of the funeral industry in 2020. The independent inquiry into David Fuller – who abused the bodies of more than 100 women and girls in hospital mortuaries – included regulation of undertakers among its recommendations. Now, a year after that report was published, ministers have decided that they agree. New laws, which should be expected to include a licensing scheme, minimum standards and provision for inspections, are on the way.
This is the right call. It is a peculiar blind spot in UK law that a service as sensitive and essential as that provided by undertakers is unregulated; the Scottish government, recognising this, introduced its own system last year. And while Bush’s case is by far the most extreme of several recent ones, he is not the only undertaker to have been jailed. Last year, another funeral director, Amie Upton, was banned from NHS mortuaries and maternity wards in Leeds after the BBC uncovered complaints about Florrie’s Army, a baby-loss service that she set up. Ms Upton has not been charged with any crime. But the Labour MP Mark Sewards has argued, rightly, that his constituents’ disturbing experiences with Florrie’s Army point to the need for new laws.
An enhanced role for local government would be in keeping with the government’s devolution push, and would require funding. Trade organisations have proposed a model in which they would play a part alongside the Human Tissue Authority. But while all options should be looked at, regulation must not be mistaken for a panacea. As in other situations where a position of trust has been abused, opportunities to intervene in Hull appear to have been missed.
About 65% of the more than 500,000 funerals that take place in the UK each year are handled by small, independent businesses. Regulation must be protective of them as well as of families who want to prepare bodies for cremation or burial themselves. Undertakers do a difficult job; those paying for their services are often extremely vulnerable. The likely increase in the cost of funerals, following tighter regulation, must also be taken seriously. Many people already struggle to afford them. It is vital to find out what the public, as well as the industry, want.
It may be that laws concerning dead bodies require a wider review, as the Law Commission believes. But the priority must be to find an effective, proportionate way to prevent rogue operators from setting up funeral businesses, and to identify any who already have. Grieving people ought to be able to have confidence in those they entrust with the bodies of relatives.
