The Bishop of Manchester asked a question on protection for smaller funeral providers during the discussion on the establishment of a regulatory regime for funeral directors on 9th September 2026:
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I want to pick up a point made from the Opposition Front Bench a few moments ago about family funeral directors. Over the last 20 years or so, we have seen many of those, in effect, bought up by large conglomerates. It is important that any regulation is created in a way that makes it commensurate for those small providers and does not create a further incentive for the large, sometimes multinational, bodies that do not have that degree of personal understanding of a particular local community.
Baroness Merron (Lab, DHSC): On that point, I was interested to look at the figures, which show that the largest three businesses collectively account for approximately a third. The right reverend Prelate emphasises a point made by other noble Lords about the importance of ensuring that regulation enables all sizes and scales of businesses in this area to do the job we need them to do and has regard to all the points that we have referred to here, while letting them conduct their business.
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