Graveyards and Burial Grounds

I salute the wise burghers of Blackburn. I hope that my own council will take note of their prompt and wise action and will repeat it immediately following the debate. Let me quote from one of the people who go around staking the gravestones in my area, Mr. Jack Sills:"““The industry test is designed to protect the public from headstones falling over. We have a duty of care to protect those visiting gravestones. There have been cases of people dying when gravestones have fallen on them.””" That is what is going on; the private contractor who profits from the staking is overstating the case. Of course there have been occasional deaths, but there were none between 2004 and 2008 since I started campaigning on this issue. It gets worse. A statement from the Crewkerne and west Crewkerne joint burial committee reads:"““When people visit and tend graves, they kneel down and normally pull themselves up by the headstone, elderly people in particular…Each time this causes the headstone to tilt over and become more unstable. We don't want them to fall down as they could cause considerable harm.””" That is the nonsense on which councillors are making decisions to spend large amounts of money staking or laying down headstones. It is total nonsense for us to envisage thousands of elderly people across the country pulling themselves up and pulling the gravestones down. In my topple-testing capacity I have visited many graveyards, and I have not yet witnessed any incident of that kind. The reasons for the minute number of accidents that have occurred are first, playgrounds. Graveyards are sometimes seen as playgrounds and people playing in them occasionally have accidents as they do playing anywhere that is inappropriate. Secondly, alcohol. On occasion, inebriated people crossing graveyards late at night—whether or not they are fleeing from the police—have managed to come into contact with a headstone and injure themselves. I am aware of one occasion when that was fatal. That has happened in the last 20 years, but it does not happen only in graveyards. There have been no deaths in the last four years. Let me mention railings. Many graveyards have railings around them. Take last year: Derby, death, railings, impaled; Rotherham, death, railings, impaled; Coventry, death, railings, impaled. I could go on. In Wycombe, there was a death from impalement on churchyard railings and in west London, someone was impaled on churchyard railings after a car accident. In fact, there have been more deaths from impalement on the railings of church or local authority graveyards than from the headstones. Of course there is a risk that young people who climb up trees to collect conkers will slip and fall. If there is something underneath, they could hurt themselves. If they fall on railings, they could kill themselves. Does that mean that we should remove every railing in Britain? Walls collapse. In the 2007 storms, two people are known to have died from collapsing walls on the same day. Do we therefore knock down every wall in Britain? On the same night, people died from falling trees, roofs and sheds. These things happen. We absolutely should have appropriate health and safety and standards in construction and maintenance, but not the nonsense that we have had around the country. I could give huge numbers of examples, but I will not because of time. We can imagine the distress caused to my constituents when they turn up and find the contractor staking their family grave or, as in one case, pulling and testing it with their hands until it moved, and then deeming it unsafe, because it finally moved. What is the remedy? The remedy is good, clear guidelines, which I believe and hope have now been completed, that give a real risk assessment, not of the headstone, but of the whole public space, from the car parking to the railings and the path that people might slip on. As with any public space, there should of course be a rational risk assessment from time to time to ensure that it is properly maintained. In Worksop cemetery in Bassetlaw, on my risk assessment—I am trained more widely as a risk assessor—the biggest danger is slates falling on someone's head and damaging them from the roof of the local authority building that has not been properly maintained. That is what needs repairing, not the headstones. In Langold cemetery, the danger is not fallen stones—there are none, because they have all been staked. The danger is that, because car parking has not been properly addressed, there is no proper turning circle, so a small child could be run over at the end or beginning of a funeral because a car has not been parked properly. Those are real risk-assessment issues. In the guidance that I hope to hear, there would be nothing about staking, and all stakes will be removed. The stake at an angle is a trip risk; the stake higher than the headstone is a slip risk; and the stake that splinters because of wheathering is a risk on both counts, and it carries a greater risk of impaling someone. The stake itself is a health and safety hazard. We need proper consultation of families.