To ask the Minister for the Economy to detail what engagement her Department has had with the funeral industry regarding (i) regulation; and (ii) licensing, over the last five years.

My department has no remit regarding regulation or licensing of the funeral industry, beyond the interest of the Trading Standards Service, which is solely from a consumer protection perspective and is covered under existing consumer protection legislation. Officials from my Department along with counterparts from the Departments for Health and Communities were briefed by the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) in 2022 about their work to roll out their Code of Practice to regulate funeral directors’ practices, introduced following a review by the Competition and Markets Authority published in December 2020.