Thousands of people in Yorkshire are dying in poverty as Marie Curie charity calls for benefits reform

It has described the data, released today following a report by Loughborough University, as "shocking".

It found that more than 7,300 people a year across Yorkshire die in poverty and that people of working age are at a high risk, with more than 1 in 4 (27 per cent) of this group in Yorkshire dying in poverty. It makes those who die at working age more than twice as likely to die in poverty than those who live past pension age.

Marie Curie is calling for urgent action to give the 25,000 people across the country of working age who die in poverty access to their State Pension, saying that the benefits system for working age people who are dying fails to protect them from falling below the poverty line.

Marie Curie is launching its 'Dying in Poverty' campaign and petition, calling for a range of measures to help terminally ill people who are struggling with the cost of living at the end of their lives.

The charity has welcomed recent steps from Government to allow people with a terminal diagnosis of 12 months or less to get expedited access to benefits, but warned these changes need implementing quickly, and that much more must be done in order to eradicate poverty at the end of life.

Dr Sarah Holmes, Medical Director at the Marie Curie Hospice, Bradford, said: “No one wants to imagine spending the last months of their life shivering in a cold home, struggling to feed themselves, their children, and burdened with the anxiety of falling into debt. But for over 7,300 people a year in Yorkshire that is their reality. It’s a far cry from the end of life that we’d all hope for. We are staggered to see the scale of poverty among dying people. Simply put, it is shocking.

“It is clear that the working age benefits system is failing to prevent dying people from falling into poverty. The UK Government must act to give dying people early access to their State Pension. It cannot be right that people who won’t live to pension age due to terminal illness miss out when they desperately need it simply because they are not ‘old enough’ when they die.”

Marie Curie's research for the Dying In Poverty campaign also found that women and people from minority ethnic groups are particularly vulnerable to poverty at the end of life with 28 per cent of working age women who die ending their life in poverty. This rises to 42 per cent among working age people from minority ethnic groups.

A breakdown of the figures shows that in Bradford 830 people were found to have died in poverty putting it top at the list with 18.9 per cent of the population. Leeds saw 1153 people die in overall poverty and in Sheffield the figure was 828.

Ryedale had the lowest figure with 66 per cent (11.6 per cent) of its population dying in poverty and analysis of the UK’s nations shows that people in Wales are at more risk of dying in poverty than in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.