Carer’s Leave Bill
Friday 21st October 2022
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Carer's Leave Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Let me first echo the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and say that it would be remiss of me not to comment on the fact that the Bill was scheduled to have its Second Reading on 9 September. Very sadly, the death of the late Queen Elizabeth prevented that. I am therefore pleased to have the opportunity to present the Bill today. Again like the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, I want to recognise the work of previous Ministers, in this case the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), who is in the Chamber, and thank them for their support for the Bill so far. I also thank the civil servants at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who have been a constant thread in the time that has elapsed since I took up this cause.
In many respects, carers are the backbone of our country. We think of caring for our loved ones as often a small and personal thing; we do it behind closed doors. It can be full-time personal care—washing, dressing or feeding; things that we instinctively think of as private—or it can be, for instance, making appointments or taking someone to a hospital appointment. Those are the small things that we do for people we love, or know, without questioning it. Taken together, however, all those individual acts of caring are huge. In 2016 the Office for National Statistics estimated that the gross value of unpaid care in the UK was almost £60 billion, and we know that that figure will only have gone up in the last six years. This country would collapse without its unpaid carers, and their importance must not be underestimated.
The Liberal Democrats have long championed unpaid carers, and never more so than under the leadership of my friend and carer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey)—I do not mean that he cares for me, but he has spoken in this House and other places about the care he gives to his family. At the height of the pandemic, the Liberal Democrats campaigned to have unpaid carers recognised as a priority group for vaccinations, and we have long been calling for employment rights for carers, including the type of leave that the Bill will introduce. Indeed, all Bills that will hopefully achieve Second Reading today are about improving employment rights for all.
Although I knew that the Bill had the backing of my party, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of cross-party support it has received. I have received support from Members from every party in the House, and I am pleased to see Members here today. Sadly, I know there would have been others, but for the rescheduling of the Bill. Indeed, I was even more ahead than the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, because I managed to secure members of the Committee before I got here. For example, I know that, among others, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on carers, and the hon. Members for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans), for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), and for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell), wanted to be here today, but they were unable to due to the rescheduling. I have been tapping them for Committee membership as a result.
I have had conversations with the Government, who I hope will support the Bill. It is disappointing that we have not had the opportunity to have an employment Bill, as proposed in the Queen’s Speech in 2019. That was long-promised, but sadly never delivered, and although that has given me, and others, the opportunity to bring forward employment legislation, we must ensure that other gaps are filled by the Government.
Members are here today because this is a good Bill, and if the House will bear with me, I will set out in more detail some of what it proposes. It will mean that for the first time ever, all employees from their first day of employment will be entitled to take time off to help manage caring responsibilities. That fills a gap in the current law whereby although employees can take limited time off for emergencies, and parents can take time off to care for their children, there is no provision for the day-to-day planned caring of adults.
The idea of a caring responsibility has been drafted widely to include as much as possible. As I said at the outset, a lot of things count as caring. Caring can include day-to-day physical support, taking someone to appointments or doing the shopping, liaising with medical staff, or sitting with someone as they struggle through a diagnosis. It could be helping elderly parents move into sheltered accommodation, or the time spent arranging for social carers to visit daily. It includes support for someone with a long-term physical or mental illness, and anything to do with old age.
The Bill has also been drafted widely to include as many caring relationships as possible. We would obviously expect it to cover immediate family, but the Bill goes further and includes not only cohabitees, tenants and lodgers, but anyone who reasonably relies on an employee to provide or arrange care. This summer I spoke to one of my constituents in relation to the Bill. In addition to caring for his wife, he does the shopping for an elderly neighbour. That small act of kindness is also caring, and the Bill recognises that.
The leave is flexible and incredibly light touch. It can be taken in half-day chunks, and it works through self-certification. The notice period is expected to be short, at twice the length of time to be taken plus one day. For most people, if they want a half day on Wednesday afternoon that means letting their employer know by Monday lunchtime. As flexible not emergency care, I believe that to be reasonable, and in line with current regulations for annual leave so easy for everybody to understand. Most importantly, employers cannot refuse a request for leave. They can ask for it to be postponed, but only in a manner that is reasonable.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
I want to emphasise some of the points that the hon. Lady is making, which illustrate that having that flexibility built in with the notice provisions, and a Bill that affects anyone who is involved in providing care, is crucial. I commend her for her work in bringing forward this Bill.
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the hon. Member for his contribution. Yes, we need to be flexible—that is important —because there is such a range of caring. It is also important, however, that we align that with other existing legislation, as that will make this easier and less burdensome for employers and employees to understand. I do not want the Bill to become law but then people do not utilise it, because they are not aware of it.
I met the Minister and officials to discuss the Bill and to ensure that it is the best we can get it before becoming law. That means that, in some areas, it does not potentially do everything that I would want it to do, if it were down to just me. For a start, my instincts would be to want the rights to be implemented immediately through primary legislation. That is not possible, which means I am trusting the Government to act in good faith in supporting the Bill, and I expect them to bring in the proposed regulations at the earliest possible opportunity. I will be here to make sure that they do.
The Bill does not go as far as Liberal Democrat policy would go. We would like there to be more time and for that to be paid, but I accept that this is a journey and that this is a vital first step in getting these rights on to the statute book now. There is nothing on the statute book that recognises leave for caring.
It is estimated that 2.3 million carers—that is a conservative estimate—cannot wait for the perfect policy to be put in place. They need these rights as soon as possible. According to the 2011 census, there are at least 3,000 carers in my North East Fife constituency. I spent summer recess meeting many of them. I have been told time and again that, although the Bill will not make their lives easy, because caring is challenging, it will help just a little bit to keep some of the plates spinning.
I learned a lot this summer about the vast variety of caring experiences that people have. Karen cares for her 91-year-old mother. She drives from Cupar in North East Fife to Annan every weekend to be with her mother—I assure the House that that is a long way; hon. Members should look it up on a map following the debate—to make sure that she is stocked up and to deal with any household tasks that need doing. Her mum is fiercely independent and wants to remain in her own home. She makes and manages her appointments and, despite the 125-mile distance between her and her mother, she is a carer and needs her employer’s support to make things work.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Is it not true that family members often do what they do out of love and that, in many ways, they find it difficult to come forward and claim the financial support they need for the hours they put in looking after their loved ones?
Wendy Chamberlain
I agree. During my conversations I find that carers are using annual leave and emergency unpaid leave, when they need to, in order to undertake caring responsibilities, and that sadly—as I will mention later—they are forced out of the workplace because they cannot manage to balance their responsibilities.
I also met the Fife carers support group in St Andrews, a group who call themselves, and I hope the House will forgive my language, the CRAP carers—that stands for compassionate, resourceful and patient. One lady was caring for her grown-up son, who is coping with severe mental health challenges, two were caring for terminally ill parents, and parents and partners with dementia were being cared for. All were doing so with huge amounts of grit and compassion, and indeed humour—as the name they have chosen shows.
I came away from meeting that group feeling not only uplifted by their love for their family members, but angry because a number of them expressed guilt—guilt that so much of their time is spent dealing with the administration of caring, rather than feeling that they can give their loved ones the care that they need. That care admin includes negotiating with their employers.
I will bring to the House’s attention the experience of one of my constituents in particular. Amanda works full time as well as providing increasing care to her mum and dad. Her dad has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and her mum, having been forgetful for a few years, is showing clear signs of dementia. Many of us will recognise that path: forgetfulness followed by confusion; denial followed by anger; and frustration as managing day-to-day life slips away. For Amanda, that means setting up appointments and speaking to carers and medical professionals. It means popping in as often as she can to do the shopping, to keep her dad company, to make sure her mum is okay and to be there after nurses leave to manage her mum’s confusion and sometimes even distress.
That is all relatively new and, so far, Amanda’s employer has been supportive. She has taken some last-minute holidays and she has been able to take the odd day off, but she is worried about what comes next. Her mum is not going to get any better. Will her employer stay supportive? What happens if she gets a new manager? Something that struck me in the earlier debate today is that sometimes it is not just about employers, but about managers and line managers, and ensuring that they have the correct information to take the correct decisions.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that this is just one of many changes that we will need to make as a society to reflect the fact that we are growing older and there are more and more of us who need care on a daily basis, much of which is thankfully provided by those heroes, unpaid carers and carers within families? I hope this is the start of a wider process where we reflect on what we can do to support carers in the incredibly important work they do.
Wendy Chamberlain
Absolutely; we have seen a lot of family legislation come in to support that, but the reality is that many people are not only looking after children and dependants, but looking after older generations as well. That is an increasing challenge for people, for employers and for society at large.
If I could, I would want to make it all better for Amanda, but I cannot. Ageing and illness are a part of life, and we care for family members because we love them and it is what we do. However, I know from research by Carers UK, which has given me and my researchers so much support in bringing this Bill forward, that there is a significant risk that someone like Amanda will burn out and end up cutting back on work or having to leave work altogether. My goal is to help, and with this Bill we can make things a little bit easier, with the guarantee of time off when she needs it—to be there when the nurse comes, to make those appointments and to have the breathing space to manage.
There is of course much more we could do to help unpaid carers, both those in work and those who find it impossible to cope and have given up their jobs to care full time. I met many carers over the summer whom this Bill will not help, because for them it is too late and they have given up on the world of work.
The experiences of those carers and the loved ones they care for are best expressed by my constituent Amy. She has multiple sclerosis and is the chair of the Fife MS Forum, and her husband now cares for her full time. That is not unusual; research by the MS Society found that 34% of carers give up work when caring for someone with MS.
I must tell the House that Amy is a force of nature. In her working life she was a behavioural scientist specifically working with young offenders. So successful was she at engaging those young people that at one point the local police force started to hear positively about a potential new gang called “Amy’s lads”—young people who were rehabilitating their lives and proud to be associated with Amy and the work she did.
However, for Amy and her husband it all boils down now to making sure that carers are valued—and not just through words, which I know we can all be guilty of. I started this speech with the time-honoured cliché that carers are the backbone of our society, but we in this House need to show that we value them through our actions.
First and foremost, that should mean uprating carer’s allowance for those who receive it and reviewing the policy under which carer’s allowance counts as income for other benefits such as universal credit. It should also mean reviewing the amount of work carers can do before they lose their allowance. That is particularly important for young carers, because those young people are caring even before they get into the world of work and will potentially be prevented from ever entering it if we do not help them.
Being a carer is hard work even when we do it for loved ones, but if we really want carers to know they are valued and if we want them to have some dignity, we must ensure that we help them. Amy told me from her experience with the MS Forum that many carers feel they are failures—failures for not being able to balance their home and professional lives, failures for not being the perfect partners, failures for not being able to get everything right. Amy was not the only person who told me that; sisters Alex and Claudia told me the same thing. They need caring for a loved one to be seen as equally valuable to paid employment. I thank the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who is not here today, for his support to both sisters when they were his constituents. The work of the right hon. Gentleman and his team has been invaluable. I want every carer to know that they are not a failure—far from it—and we need policies to put that into action. I hope that all hon. Members agree.
To turn back to the details of carer’s leave, I will set out how the Bill will work for businesses. I am delighted that this is a policy where doing the right thing for people is also doing the right thing for businesses. Thanks to Carers UK, I have had several opportunities to speak with businesses that already have support policies in place for carers. A carer from one of those companies is in the Gallery. Those businesses include Centrica, TSB Bank, Nationwide Building Society, the Phoenix Group, CMS, and not forgetting the University of St Andrews, which is the largest employer in my constituency. From those meetings, I happily offer the House three key observations.
First, offering carer’s leave, even paid carer’s leave, makes financial sense for businesses in the long run. Centrica, which has been at the forefront of the move among businesses to be carer-friendly, offers 10 days’ paid leave. With 20,000 employees, it estimates that it is saving £3.1 million a year by avoiding unplanned absences and improving employee retention. It and other businesses also report increased loyalty and higher motivation. People who feel supported in difficult times are simply more likely to put in that extra effort in the good times. That was borne out by what I have heard from carers. They want to keep working and are grateful for the support from their employers that means that they can.
Secondly, I have heard about the importance of formal leave policies that are well communicated and widely used throughout organisations. There are many different businesses and organisations in this country, and within those companies, there are lots of people doing lots of different types of roles. I have heard that, even within organisations that are ahead of the game on such policies, it can be a challenge to get people to make use of the time that they are allowed. That sometimes makes people feel that the policies are not for them, because they work in a frontline or customer-facing role. That is why this law would help employees even in companies that are already on this journey. The Bill will make it a legal right, which will feel very different from just a perk of working for a good employer.
Thirdly, I was struck by the strength of feeling among businesses that there was a role for employers in helping their staff to recognise that they are carers and to feel supported and dignified in accessing the help they need. My husband is in the Gallery and he cares for his mother. He does not think of himself as a carer—many carers do not. Those businesses felt that introducing carer’s leave and other support, and reaching out to build a network, had been a catalyst that had kick-started an open conversation about what being a carer looks like. It helped people to realise the many forms that caring can take and that support is available to them. Again, the Bill plays a part in that by bringing the conversation into the open and into businesses up and down the country.
I also want to highlight the Scottish Government’s carer positive scheme. I am pleased to say that my office has just been accredited as a carer positive organisation. That is a way to identify and share good practice, and to show that an organisation is proud to support carers. If someone is in Scotland, I recommend finding out more about that.
Before I conclude, I will reflect on why this Bill works for the Government. Sitting on the Opposition Benches, I am not usually in the business of helping those on the Government Benches, but I assume that despite a tumultuous week, the Government are still broadly in favour of wanting to get more people, especially the over-50s, back into work—as set out in the growth plan of the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng). I agree with the Government on that, although I oppose any plans that force people into unsuitable work through the threat of sanctions or benefit cuts.
The good news for the Government is that the primary demographic that will benefit from the Bill and will be supported to stay in work is the over-50s, particularly women, who have a 50:50 chance of providing care by the age of 46—I am just about there—and are more likely to work part time as a result. If the Government want people who have a 50% chance of caring to be in employment, having employment rights for carers is a really good first step. As I previously said, this Bill will also help to get young carers into the workplace and support them as they come in.
I appreciate that I have touched on this already, and it is outwith the Minister’s portfolio, but it would definitely help if we lifted the number of hours that someone can work before they lose their carer’s allowance. At the moment, carers can earn only £132 per week before it is taken away. That is less than 14 hours on the minimum wage. Increasing that to 25 hours, ideally on the slightly higher living wage, would go so far towards helping carers to keep their jobs and support themselves. Put simply, if the Government want people to work, they should let them.
I know that many of my colleagues want to speak in favour of the Bill, for which I am grateful, so I would like to conclude my remarks by returning to Amanda—caring for her parents, now more a parent than a child, trying to hold everything together. We all in this place, through our constituency casework, our family and friends, know someone like Amanda; it may even be us in the future. Our constituents, too, will either be in this situation or know someone who is being stretched in every direction. We are passing this Bill’s Second Reading today for them. I commend the Bill to the House.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), and I commend her for bringing in this important and timely Bill. She articulated so clearly the reasons why we need the Bill and its rationale, and I will not repeat the points she made because I could not clear that bar, but I want to chime in with support for the aims behind it.
The hon. Lady touched on some of the facts and figures, but we need to remind ourselves that in the first eight months of the pandemic, unpaid carers saved the state £135 billion. The contribution that this group of people have made to our society, particularly during that period but also more broadly, is without question. The truth is that, at some point in our lives, we will all having caring responsibilities of one form or another. This transcends society. It will impact every single person in the Chamber at some point, because we all have family members and people we love and care about, and it hits every single one of our constituents. The Bill is a great leveller for all of us, because we will all have to care for someone at some point, and we should not have to worry about our employment or financial obligations as a result of stepping up and helping the people we care about. I agree with the purpose of the Bill.
On the economics behind this, and particularly job retention, the hon. Lady talked about the £3.1 million a year that companies could save by supporting and retaining people through this legislation. As we touched on in the previous debate, we do not want to lose talented people from our workforce, but we run the risk of doing that if people cannot fulfil their caring responsibilities.
We come at this from different political prisms, as is often the case in the House, but we unite on the basis that this is an important, pragmatic piece of legislation. Those of us on the Government Benches often talk about giving people the opportunity to achieve what they wish to in life. Many of us are here or joined our party on the basis that we would do that. This issue is at the core of our principles as well, because it is about allowing people to achieve their potential, in spite of whatever circumstances may come their way, by giving them this opportunity.
I am proud to support the Bill, and the hon. Member for North East Fife has my support in what she is trying to achieve. If she needs someone to serve on the Bill Committee, she can put my name down; that is not a problem at all, and I expect an email in due course. What we are trying to do here today is absolutely right. Economically, it makes sense; socially, it makes sense; and morally, it makes sense. If we are determined to create a society founded on the basis that people care for one another and that we have strong family units and strong caring units, we have to ensure that there are the conditions in which they can do that. That means we have to legislate to ensure that those rights are protected, through carer’s leave and what this Bill tries to achieve.
The hon. Lady highlighted some organisations that are doing great work on this already, but that should not be the exception; it should be the norm. If we have to legislate to do this, we will, because it will ultimately ensure that people can achieve their ambitions and that we can care for people in society; that is what this is about. I can tell the hon. Lady that I absolutely endorse her Bill.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on her success in the ballot and bringing forward this really important Bill. I commend her for mentioning Carer Positive, the Scottish Government’s scheme of which I have been a member for many years.
I may almost need to declare an interest as I was a carer for my late husband. I know that I was in such a fortunate position in being able to do that without any fear of having to ask for time off. I thank hon. Members across the House who supported me during that difficult time. It was a privilege to help care for him, but it was also much, much easier for me than it would be for any normal member of the public. That is why the Bill is so important.
I acknowledge the work carried out previously by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) unfortunately could not be here, but I am glad to hear that he has asked to be a member of the Bill Committee if everything goes smoothly today. However, I am not just here in his place as the SNP spokesperson on disabilities.
Where people have disabilities, their carers in particular work really hard and are fully deserving of a hand from the Government. So many organisations do good work. In particular, I commend Carers UK. I went to one of its drop-in sessions in this place having intended just to pop in and out, but I stayed for an hour and a half simply hearing about the first-hand experiences of carers, both in and outwith work. The Bill deals with people who are in work so that, by right, they will get leave to do important, necessary things such as shopping and hospital appointments and all the things that the hon. Member for North East Fife mentioned.
It does not reflect well on our society if we expect carers to care all the time and get no help from the state. It is really important that we acknowledge and help them. As people have said, not all heroes wear capes, and that is really true of folk who are working and doing unpaid care. Many people are helped by organisations such as North Lanarkshire Carers Together, which is based in the same office building as me in Motherwell. I am sure that it would highly appreciate the Bill progressing.
Evidence suggests that about 5 million people across the UK are providing unpaid care by looking after an elderly or disabled family member, relative or friend. Nearly half of them are also in work. As was mentioned in the previous debate, we have an ageing population in the UK, so we can expect that the number of carers to rise substantially.
It can be a real struggle to balance work and care. Many carers say that they are tired, stressed and struggling to manage their own physical and mental health. They urgently need more support to ensure that they can remain in work. The successful passage of the Bill would be a major step forward in recognising the enormous contribution that unpaid carers make to the care, health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities across the country.
When we think of carers, we tend to think of people looking after elderly relatives or parents, and sometimes of someone looking after a family member or friend. In reality, the person requiring care could be someone with an almost unimaginable range of circumstances, including adults and children of all ages. It is really important that we provide people with support so that they can do that caring.
It may seem strange to say, but carers leave could also have significant benefits for employers through lower recruitment and retention costs, better staff planning and better engagement. It will help to keep many more skilled people, the majority of them women, in work and contributing to our economy. The hon. Member for North East Fife mentioned the number of people who have to leave employment because they cannot do the necessary juggling.
Carers leave could also improve workforce health and wellbeing outcomes, which is important for everyone. It is still the case that most, but not all, carers are women. If women are in work, they can be role models to other women. These role models disappear if women have to leave work because of caring responsibilities. It is good when the Government and society recognise what people are doing. Although this is a small measure, it is important recognition.
We owe a debt of gratitude to carers who voluntarily do so much to care for others in our society, and we as a Parliament must do what we can to support them. My absent hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, my party and I support this Bill, and we hope that this Government, and future Governments, will continue to recognise the value and contribution of unpaid carers and introduce legislation to ensure at least one week’s paid leave—ideally paid by the Government at a set rate in order to compensate employers—with a pledge to move to two weeks, or 10 days, of paid leave, and a longer period of up to six months’ unpaid leave.
I hope the Bill will proceed with Government support, and I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife for introducing it.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I rise to support the Second Reading of this excellent Bill, and to congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on introducing it. This timely Bill is much needed, and it is warmly welcomed on both sides of the House. I trust it will proceed smoothly through both Houses.
As the hon. Lady said, the world is full of carers who look after people far less fortunate than themselves. We should congratulate them on their work and, as the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) rightly said, we should recognise and support them wherever we can.
We heard in the previous debate about our falling birth rate and ageing population. All of us, at one stage or another, will undoubtedly need some form of care. In some ways, this Bill is an insurance policy. Indeed, the number of carers will undoubtably increase and, as we all know, the cost of living and inflation mean that the cost of professional care is extremely high. The cost of hospices, paid carers and retirement homes has therefore become an impossible strain on many families, and it increases the need for unpaid care.
I was shocked but, nevertheless, heartened to learn that in Harrow, the borough I have the honour of representing, there are now some 25,000 unpaid home carers—that is equivalent to one in 10 people—whose life is significantly impacted by caring responsibilities. It is also the second highest number of unpaid home carers in the London boroughs. Only 15% of those 25,000 carers receive any financial support or recompense at all, so 85% are left to fend for themselves. They have to juggle a career, their family and other responsibilities.
From hearing other colleagues speak this morning, I think that personal memories are powerful. I remember in my early 20s, when I was still at university, having to remotely care for my parents, who were both suffering with cancer. They eventually died of cancer, my mother at a very young age. It is vital that we recognise the stress placed on carers, their careers and families. Watching people you love die is very hard. You never forget it. It is vital to remember that some carers have to juggle caring responsibilities for other members as well. We must also recognise that dependency on care can be sudden. It can place people in an almost impossible position of how to deal with their circumstances at work. The Bill creates powers for the Secretary of State to enable employees to go on work leave, and quite rightly.
When passed, the Bill will immediately help 2 million people. That has to be good news. That is a high proportion of the population, showing how important the Bill is. The knock-on effect of allowing opportunities for carers to take time off work is that people are more rested and productive when they return to the workplace. It benefits the employer and the employee and helps people maintain a balance.
I welcome the Bill and the emphasis it puts on the hard work that carers provide. It is an important though probably not final step, because we need to support carers. I trust that the Government will not only encourage and give the Bill a clean bill of health, but also keep under review what else must be done to help carers. I offer my support to the hon. Member for North East Fife. I doubt that she will be able to support my private Member’s Bill in a few weeks’ time, because it applies to England only, but nevertheless, I am happy to extend a hand of friendship to arm her Bill.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
I would like to thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for introducing and driving through this important Bill. It goes a long way in helping hard-working carers juggle their caring responsibilities with their employment. I will say only a few words, because we may otherwise run out of time, and that would be completely wrong for this Bill.
The approximately 4.2 million people across the UK providing unpaid care, over half of whom do so alongside their jobs, are playing a vital role in supporting some of the most vulnerable people, often at a cost to their own lives. I know from conversations with my constituents of the toll that providing care, often unexpectedly, can take—not just on the mental and physical wellbeing of the carer, but also on their household finances and other responsibilities, including their jobs. I would like to take this opportunity to thank every single person in this country who conducts any form of caring. It is a hidden cost to society. They maintain and look after it, and they do fantastic work. I thank them very much indeed.
Juggling caring responsibilities and work can be particularly challenging and can limit the participation of unpaid carers in the labour market. We know that women, who are often still the primary carers within families, tend to be disproportionately impacted. Carers must receive the right support to help them carry out their caring roles, and I welcome that the Government enshrined improved rights for carers in the Care Act 2014 and have been working hard to implement this ever since.
I was proud to stand on a manifesto that committed to extending the entitlement to leave for unpaid carers to one week, and I was pleased when the Government launched a consultation with their proposals for entitlement to carer’s leave. In their response to this consultation, the wide-ranging support for such a policy was highlighted, and it was evident that flexibility is the key to meeting the needs of carers.
The Bill draws on all this work and would ensure that flexibility is built into workplaces, so that from the first day of employment, carers can request leave to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. That is very important, because it means carers can move from job to job, improving their career, and yet still have help from day one. It is especially important that this additional rise is not dependent on length of service, and that it can be divided up as needed, because we must ensure that legislation accurately reflects the realities of caring, which is often unpredictable in nature. I welcome the Bill’s support from key stakeholders, who arguably have the greatest understanding of the needs of carers, including Carers UK. I support and welcome the Bill, and I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife for bringing it forward.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Like other speakers, I am delighted to support this Bill and I am very happy to follow on from a great speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). Introducing a day one right to carer’s leave is a really good step forward in the crucial task of making life easier for the millions of unpaid carers who do such dedicated work across our United Kingdom. I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for bringing the Bill forward.
As we have heard today, very often caring responsibilities fall on women—although not exclusively, of course. Like the first Bill we reflected on this morning, this Bill is another way to ensure gender equality and that we are doing all we can to support women to pursue the opportunities and careers that they wish to pursue. We started out this morning reflecting on pregnancy and maternity leave; many women go through that in their 20s, 30s or 40s. We now are going on to the caring responsibilities that many women take on in their 40s, 50s and 60s. We have covered that spectrum today.
As I said in an intervention, I feel that this is just one point on a longer journey. There are many things in this country that we will have to change if we are to adapt to an ageing population that needs more care. Finding different ways to make life easier for those heroes who care for their elderly relatives will be an important task for us as a generation. Like others, I highlight the incredible economic value of the work done by unpaid carers. If that burden fell on the state, it would have a massive impact on the public finances and cost billions of pounds. We all owe carers a massive debt of gratitude. This Bill is just one small step in trying to repay that.
I recognise that many employers would already go well beyond what is in this Bill, and I encourage them to do that. In terms of legislation, I hope in the future we can go further than what is currently in this Bill.
I will close my brief remarks—I do not want to jeopardise this Bill or subsequent ones on the Order Paper—by commending all the carers in my constituency. I have met many of them in the 17 years I have had the privilege to represent Chipping Barnet in this House. They are incredible people who are incredibly dedicated. Sometimes they work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I single them out for their compassion and dedication, as well as the groups that support them, such as Friend in Need in east Barnet and the Barnet carers centre.
We all know that we face difficult decisions on spending and the public finances over the coming weeks and months for many reasons, not least the overhang of covid and the debts that has left us with. We must always ensure that we do as much as possible to ensure that the social care system is funded, not least because of the crucial importance of respite care in giving all of our wonderful unpaid carers support, respite and the opportunity to live their lives. I look forward to supporting this Bill today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Dean Russell)
It is always an honour to speak in these debates, and this one in particular shows the emotion that flows round the House. I really thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for bringing forward this important legislation, and I thank all hon. Members who have spoken on this important issue. I will do my best to cover some of the key points—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I do apologise for interrupting the Minister. It is important to admit a mistake when one has made one. I have omitted to call the Opposition spokesman. I am terribly sorry, but I got the order wrong. I call Imran Hussain.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think it is a fair mistake. When one has been sitting here since 9.30 this morning, one blends into the furniture and background. I fully understand.
I, too, thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for bringing forward this very important debate. As I did in the previous debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), I congratulate her on securing support for this Bill from across the House. The speeches we have heard, which I will come on to, are all a tribute to how she has worked across this House to secure support. The point I made earlier was that, in any debate of this nature on a private Member’s Bill, securing such support requires a lot of hard work and dedication in working with colleagues and coming to compromises on certain issues. Well done to her and to all the hon. Members who have made excellent contributions during the debate.
The hon. Lady herself spoke very well about the huge benefits this legislation will bring. That point was continued by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey). He gave a figure, which I was not aware of, of £135 billion as the amount that has been saved by the work—the fantastic work—done by carers. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) again spoke passionately about her personal experiences. She is quite right and I join her when she says that we, as a House and as a country, owe a debt of gratitude to carers for all the work they do. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is absolutely right in saying that the number of people who ultimately, with time, will need care will undoubtedly increase. I think that is a common-sense argument, and I agree with him. Both the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) also set out the huge benefits that the Bill will bring, and I absolutely agree with them.
I am conscious of the time, so I may not speak for as long as I did in the previous debate. I am very conscious of the need for the Bill to progress, but I will make a few points. First, I join all other Members in thanking carers for the fantastic work they do. I think all in the House would agree that there is no doubt that statutory carer’s leave is long overdue. While almost 5 million working people care without pay for friends, family and loved ones alongside their work, they have no statutory right to request time off to attend to these important responsibilities when the need arises. Instead, they are forced to take annual leave to care for their family or friends, rather than use it for their own rest and relaxation. Given the increased risk of sickness, exhaustion and burnout that unpaid carers face, they desperately need to take that leave for themselves. If they do not take annual leave, they are forced to rely on the good will of their employers to allow them to take unpaid leave instead. As we have heard with countless examples, that is given on some occasions and, tragically, is not on others. Given the important role that unpaid carers play and the fact that so many of them find themselves in precarious financial positions, especially with the soaring cost of living crisis, this situation is simply unacceptable.
Many Members have set out the huge benefits of having carer’s leave in statute. Carers UK has stated that granting unpaid carers the right to take carer’s leave would improve the finances of carers who would no longer have to reduce their working hours or give up work altogether. It would also increase productivity for employers by improving retention rates, and increase economic gains for the Treasury—a point made by other hon. Members. It would support women in the workforce who are, tragically, overwhelmingly more likely to be juggling work and unpaid caring responsibilities.
The issue of carer’s leave should have been addressed by the Government long ago. We therefore support the Bill, but it is disappointing that we have had to wait for it for so long while the Government have continued to drag their feet to introduce statutory carer’s leave. It is especially disappointing given that they promised in their last two manifestos in 2017 and 2019 to introduce statutory carer’s leave, creating false hope for unpaid carers up and down the country for the past five years.
While the Government were right to junk many of the proposals of their 2017 manifesto, the promise of introducing statutory carer’s leave should not have been one of them. I am sure that the Minister will explain why it has taken so long to get the proposals to the Floor of the House, and why these important measures are being introduced only as a private Member’s Bill and not as Government legislation, given their repeated commitments to me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) to introduce an employment Bill. As I said earlier, such a Bill would have allowed the Government to protect unpaid carers and much more.
We of course support the Bill, but it falls short of what unpaid carers really need, which is paid carer’s leave. Under the proposals set out in our new deal for working people, the next Labour Government will legislate to introduce just that, to ensure that working people can respond to family emergencies as and when they arise without being left out of pocket.
Unpaid carers are among the many unsung heroes of the health and care sector—a point that ran through all the contributions today. They step in to support their friends and family with care so that those people can retain some of their independence and dignity. I hope that the Bill progresses with support from all parties. This important Bill certainly has our support and I hope the Government will join us in supporting it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Dean Russell)
I should start by letting anyone watching on Parliament TV know that this is not a glitch—I am genuinely on my feet.
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for introducing this important legislation. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken on this important issue. We must remember that any one of us, due to circumstances in our lives or those of our loved ones, could be a carer, and perhaps one who needs to work at the same time. The Bill affects everyone across society, but especially those incredible people who care for others. With that in mind, I am pleased to confirm that the Government will support the Bill. I thank my predecessors, my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for their work in this incredibly important area.
Carer’s leave will enable unpaid carers who are balancing paid employment with their caring responsibilities to take some time out of work if required, which will provide increased flexibility to support them to stay in work. The Bill has support across the House, which I was pleased to see reflected in our debate.
The speeches of the hon. Member for North East Fife and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) were incredible, especially the statistics that my hon. Friend cited. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) gave incredibly powerful and moving testimony about her own experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) shared his personal experience with his parents; my heart truly went out to him.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) is an incredibly experienced politician and a staunch and hard-working representative for her constituents. She asked whether we should legislate to go further, and she recognised the importance of the Bill and of where we are today. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough cited powerful statistics in support of the Bill and spoke about her work on the Bill as a Minister.
The Bill will provide invaluable support to unpaid carers, who carry out such an important and often difficult role in looking after their loved ones. It has been wonderful to see support for it across the House and across the political spectrum today. The Government truly look forward, as I do, to continuing to work closely with the hon. Member for North East Fife to support its passage.
Wendy Chamberlain
With the leave of the House, I will be brief, because I know that time is running short. I thank the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who does so much to make Fridays work. Her advice and guidance to me have been invaluable.
My researcher Kathryn Sturgeon has done fantastic work with Carers UK. Carers UK, you are absolute legends in what you do for carers and for unpaid carers—thanks for your support with the Bill. I have worked closely with Fife Carers and with Fife Young Carers; it has been great to speak to so many constituents. I thank all hon. Members for their speeches and interventions: it is important that people out there know how much this House appreciates carers and their work.
The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said that not all heroes wear capes. So many carers feel quite the opposite because of the burden that they face in their caring responsibilities. I am delighted to hear that the Government will support my Bill. I hope that we can send a message to carers that we do think of them as heroes, and we do appreciate what they do.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
Carer's Leave Bill
Wednesday 9th November 2022
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Carer's Leave Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminaries for the Committee to bear in mind. Switch off your telephones, please, or at least switch them to silent. No food or drink is allowed, except for the water provided. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to them at the usual address.
My selection for the grouping for today’s sitting is available in the room. No amendments have been tabled, so we will have a single debate on all the clauses and schedules in the Bill.
Clause 1
Carer’s Leave
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 2 stand part.
Clause 3 stand part.
That the schedule be the Schedule to the Bill.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank everyone who is here today—those here voluntarily and those I spoke to very nicely. I welcome the Minister to his place. He is the fourth Minister I have worked with on this Bill, and I am grateful for his support and for that of his predecessors, including the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell). I also thank the officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for their excellent work and support over recent months. It is lovely to see them here today.
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to carry this Bill through scrutiny in Committee and, I hope, on to its final stages in the Commons. It is wonderful to see so much good work and cross-party co-operation to ensure that this important piece of legislation progresses. I am delighted we are here today to take a step closer to introducing a much-needed new leave entitlement for unpaid carers. We all know the many challenges facing unpaid carers, of which juggling work is just one.
The Carers UK published its “State of Caring 2022” report yesterday, and I will take this opportunity—I take every opportunity—to thank it again for its support. I see one of its representatives in the Gallery. As the most up-to-date evidence that we have about unpaid carers, I will refer to it a few times this morning. I am sure other members of the Committee who have a particular interest will have also seen it, and I encourage those who have not to do so as we all have unpaid carers in our constituencies. It is an impressive piece of work, but it is hard reading because it lays out all the ways in which unpaid carers are still, arguably, being failed.
According to the report, we can currently estimate that one in five adults in the United Kingdom are providing care. That is a huge number. It is hard to estimate how many of those are also in employment—a conservative estimate is 2.3 million. We will need to wait for the publication of the England and Wales census later this year—Scotland’s is next year—to get more accurate estimates, but we know that the numbers are high and ever increasing.
Tempting as it might be, I will not use this morning to provide a summary of the report and all its many recommendations. The Minister knows that I am keen on other recommendations being implemented, especially those that relate to carer’s allowance, but I know we all have places to be, so I will return to the matter in front of us: the Carer’s Leave Bill.
The Bill would put on the statute book for the first time employment rights specifically designed to help unpaid carers with one week of unpaid leave per year for those in full-time employment. That is desperately needed, with 75% of respondents in the Carers UK research worrying about juggling work and care. A significant number of others have either already gone part time or given up work entirely. That was certainly my experience in North East Fife. When I tried to find constituents who would directly benefit from the Bill, a number of people got in touch with me to say that they had given up employment as a result of their caring responsibilities.
We know that employment is a vital lifeline for many people. It is not just about income, although that is clearly a key issue. The majority of carers state that they are also worried about managing their monthly costs, with almost all making spending reductions, including a quarter cutting back on heating and eating. I want to pause here and reiterate that one in four—an estimated 2.5 million unpaid carers who selflessly help others—are having to cut back on their essentials. For most, that means nearing, if not already experiencing, destitution.
In addition to the financial element, this is also about health and wellbeing. On average, carers rate their life satisfaction and happiness distinctly lower than the general population: 4.7 compared with 7.4 and 4.8 compared with 7.4 on a scale of one to 10. Anxiety, stress, loneliness and burnout are common factors. The Bill alone will of course not resolve those issues, but I would argue that a carer being able to use their annual leave for their own rest, being able to take leave from work without feeling at a disadvantage, enjoying their workplace as a regular respite from care rather than work, and having an employer increasingly more likely to recognise and support them in all their roles can only help. I am sure that others present agree.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member on getting a Bill to this stage, and welcome the Government’s support for it. I, too, pay tribute to the army of carers out there. I am part of the all-party parliamentary group on carers, and carers tell me that the ideal situation would be to get paid leave for carers in the longer term. The Bill is a good step forward, but will she join me and carers organisations in asking the Government to look seriously at that, and to bring back paid leave for carers?
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. My party’s policy is to have paid leave, but the Bill is an important step, putting statutory rights to request leave on the statute book in for the first time. I hope that it is an initial step in doing much more to support carers in all their guises.
Before looking at the text of the Bill, I will briefly mention that it also benefits employers. As I outlined on Second Reading, I have had the pleasure of meeting several businesses that already have carer-friendly employment practices. The evidence that they shared made it clear that having such practices not only is the right thing to do but produces financial benefits through staff motivation and lower turnover. It is a win-win.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I welcome this private Member’s Bill and the Government’s support for it. Does the hon. Member agree that this is a timely Bill, particularly with more women going into the workplace? Women of my generation are very much the sandwich generation: we have elderly parents and children. Also, with medical advancements, more children are surviving disabilities that they might have died from earlier. That means that there is an increased pressure on families to provide care for children as they grow older.
Wendy Chamberlain
I absolutely agree. There are so many different iterations of carers and who they are providing care to. I have certainly seen that myself. It is really important that the Government support the Bill, because that provides better recognition. We know that one of the UK’s productivity challenges is the number of people who are economically inactive, which has increased post covid. We also know that it tends to be older women, and if the Bill is an opportunity to help them to get them back into the workplace, that can only be positive.
The text of the Bill sets out in detail the legal framework for the entitlement. Large parts of it are very similar to other leave entitlements that are already in operation. That avoids adding complexity, both for employers and employees who will make use of carer’s leave. The main aspects of the entitlement are as follows: the Bill requires the Secretary of State to make regulations to entitle an employee to be absent from work in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. There will be no qualifying period, meaning that eligible employees will be able to make a request to take carer’s leave from the first day of their employment. A broad approach has been taken to defining the key terms of eligibility, a dependant and a long-term care need in order to ensure that eligibility is as open as possible, and can encompass the many different circumstances in which a dependant might need care.
I will pause on that element to highlight its importance, because a significant issue is simply getting carers to recognise themselves as such and, therefore, as entitled to support. As I said on Second Reading, my husband is a carer to his mother but would not recognise himself as a carer. Over half of carers take more than a year, and 36% take three years, to recognise themselves as such. As those are the proportions of carers who now see themselves as such, there is potentially an unsurveyed cohort that we do not know about. Making the definition as broad as possible is vital to start conversations, and to show people the different forms that care can take and, vitally, that support is available.
The Bill’s overall objective is to ensure that carer’s leave is available to those caring for someone with a significant and long-term care need, but flexibility and a light-touch administrative burden are fundamental features of the new entitlement. It will allow for a proportionate process to be put in place through regulations to enable employers to plan and manage absences arising from carer’s leave.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
I commend the hon. Lady on her work, and the Government on their support for this important Bill. She will not be surprised to learn that more than one in 10 residents in my constituency are a carer for a loved one or near neighbour. My understanding from my constituents and the business community is that they are supportive of the Bill, and that employers may fear nothing from it. Those with caring responsibilities do not even tend to take the allowance given to them, but the flexibility and recognition is what makes it so incredibly valuable.
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. When we engage with employers on such things, they recognise the importance of retaining and motivating their staff. They invest in their training and development and want them to stay with them. I think the Bill will really help employers on that front, and as a result will help their employees as well.
No amendments have been tabled to the Bill, so I will now discuss the clauses and schedule in greater detail. Clause 1 is uncontroversial and is simply the route to provide for the substance of the Bill through the schedule. For the legislation to achieve its policy aims, it may be necessary to amend existing legislation, and clause 2 allows for that to happen. Clause 3 addresses a procedural point, setting out the extent of the Bill, making provision for commencement and providing the short title. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
The substance of the Bill is contained in the schedule. This is the most important part of the Bill. Part 1 of the schedule creates carer’s leave as a concept by inserting proposed new sections into the Employment Rights Act 1996. First, this part of the schedule covers who is entitled to carer’s leave. The key definitions of a dependant and a long-term care need are set out in the Bill. The schedule then goes on to address the length of the entitlement, which shall be a minimum of one week.
A cap on the length of leave that employers will be required to offer is not set out in the Bill but will be included in regulations. As set out in the Government’s response to the consultation on carer’s leave, I understand that it will be one week. Of course, there is no cap on the amount of leave that employers can offer if they wish. I am sure that we all know from speaking to employers and others in our constituencies that there are employers who go far above what is set out in the Bill. Regulations may also provide for how the leave can be taken, which includes providing that the leave is available to be taken non-continuously. Regulations can provide that particular activities are, or are not, to be treated as providing or arranging care, but I understand that the Government’s intention is not to further define those activities.
Part 1 goes on to set out the protections offered to employees while they are on carer’s leave. In particular, it provides that regulations must create an entitlement for employees to return from carer’s leave to a type of work prescribed by those regulations. That sounds technical, but basically it covers remuneration, bonuses, redundancies and when the leave is taken immediately after other types of leave, such as maternity. This part of the schedule also allows for regulations to be made to address notice, evidence and procedural requirements. A framework will be created through regulations that will be clear and simple for employers and employees to follow. Importantly, the Bill makes it particularly clear that the regulations can provide that an employer cannot require an employee to supply evidence in relation to their request for leave. Finally, part 1 of the schedule sets out when an employee may make a complaint to an employment tribunal. I commend it to the Committee.
Part 2 of the schedule contains further amendments to primary legislation affected by carer’s leave. It sets out the consequential amendments that will be required to ensure that the measure is effective and does not have an adverse impact on existing legislation. I do not propose to explain each in turn; I will simply commend part 2 as a whole. I thank Members for their time, interest and presence this morning.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
It is a delight to be a member of this Bill Committee. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife on bringing the Bill, and I am absolutely delighted that the Government are supporting it.
Unusually, we find ourselves in violent agreement on the reasons behind the Bill. Prior to the pandemic, it was calculated that about 4.9 million people across the country were juggling some kind of unpaid care with paid work. As the hon. Lady said, it is almost impossible to quantify that work because so many carers do not identify themselves as such and often go without the support and help they need. We know that such caring work has an almost unquantifiable impact on their lives and causes undue stress. As a result, those people may find that they have to leave the workforce.
Many of us never consider that we might become unpaid carers, but Carers UK has calculated that two thirds of us will end up fulfilling that role at some stage in our lives. I saw that for myself when my mum was an unpaid carer for my nan. At the time, we were running our family business, and as I had just had my first child, my mum was part of that sandwich generation that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster spoke about. Of course, the responsibility for caring so often falls to women, which is why so many fall out of the workforce. I saw the impact that those caring responsibilities had on my mum, on her professional life and on every aspect of her own health and wellbeing.
Staying in work while providing such care can be incredibly challenging. That is why the Bill is so important. I am honoured to chair the all-party parliamentary group on carers, which is proud to support the Bill. We know that, in prioritising someone else’s health and care needs, carers up and down the country are not prioritising their own, which can have a massive impact. People do it not for reimbursement or money, but almost entirely out of love and responsibility, and we must recognise that.
As our population ages and changes, and as the way we work changes, we need to ensure that we change with them, because the number of people juggling work and care will only ever increase. We already lag behind other countries when it comes to workplace rights for carers. Many advanced and further ageing economies—including Japan, Canada, the US, Germany, Ireland and France—have some form of carer’s leave in place.
Leave entitlement for carers was a Conservative manifesto commitment for the 2019 general election, so it is disappointing that it has not been introduced by a Conservative Government, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for North East Fife for doing so. I am pleased, however, that the Conservative Government recognise that the right for unpaid carers take up to a week of leave could make a real difference between somebody staying or leaving the workforce.
It would be a good thing for employers, too, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne said. We always talk about the productivity gap, the skills gap and retaining excellent and experienced staff, but people’s caring responsibilities often kick in during the second half of their working lives, when they are at their most experienced and have the most expertise. Businesses face the enormous financial burden not only of losing them and their expertise at that stage, but of the ensuing recruitment costs. I am pleased that the key definitions and parameters that are built into the Bill align with existing provisions for other family leave, making them easier for employers to implement. That is important because we want to minimise the burden on employers and make arrangements easier for employees to understand.
I think this is an excellent piece of legislation. Carers have done so much for our country—they save the NHS and our social care system so much money—so this is the best thing we can do to give something back. That is why I wholeheartedly support the Bill.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I wholeheartedly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife, who has fought a serious campaign on this subject. She speaks from her heart, and from her constituents’ experience, which is the best place from which to try to make a change.
I also congratulate the Government on listening, and on agreeing to this Bill, but I will challenge them a little towards the end of my speech, if that is okay. The Bill is indeed a crucial step forward. It is important partly because it is recognition of what carers do and bring to this country. They do an enormous amount, and the services that they provide save the Government a lot, but as the Bill recognises, that comes at enormous personal cost to the carer. In 2019, over half of respondents to the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s family and friends survey said that they did not have the support they needed, and more than one in three had given up work altogether to care for someone with MS. It is not right and not productive that an average of 600 people a day leave work to care for someone.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife on a really good Bill. It is a step in the right direction, and I wholeheartedly support it. As hon. Members have said, there are 4.2 million unpaid carers across the UK. They must be valued, heard, and given the support and advice that they need to provide their priceless care.
I have been a carer, and I cannot tell hon. Members how difficult it is. My mother died when I was quite young of acute myeloid leukaemia. There were two and a half weeks between her diagnosis and death. For my father, it was a different matter. He had a nasty cancer, and I ended up having to care for him for the last six months of his life. I had just gone back to work as a solicitor, and I had him living with me. I cannot tell hon. Members how difficult it was; there was guilt about not being there for him every day when he was dying. We were in a financial position to get a live-in carer, who was my guardian angel, and I am very grateful for that.
The Bill is a step in the right direction, but I urge the Minister to think about increasing the number of weeks in question, so that people can be paid for up to four weeks for caring for their loved ones, and for giving palliative care to a loved one who is dying. I urge him to think about that, because I cannot tell him how difficult it is to be a carer in those circumstances.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye, who brought her personal experience to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife on the Bill and also reflect the same warmth and consensus that is felt when we all agree on something.
Leave for carers in employment is a hugely important part of the more comprehensive package that we need to provide for those providing care for loved ones. I want to briefly mention a group who are not in employment but whose employment opportunities are affected by their caring responsibilities. I do so as chair of the newly formed all-party parliamentary group on young carers and young adult carers. The 2011 census suggested that there are some 180,000 young carers in the UK, one in eight of whom are under the age of eight. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, as the numbers are estimated to be closer to 700,000 and, as has already been said, many of them do not recognise themselves as carers, not just for the same reasons as adult carers, but because it has been their entire life.
The Carers Trust estimates that one in 12 children and young people take on mid to high-level care for a family member. The average age is 12 and the average annual income for their families is £5,000 lower; 68% are bullied at school, with 26% have been bullied because of their caring role; 45% report having a mental health problem; they achieve nine grades lower at GCSE than their peers; and if they get into further or higher education, they are four times more likely to drop out. All of that clearly affects their life chances, employment opportunities and career prospects, but they receive very little mention in the adult social care White Paper.
Nickie Aiken
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising the important issue of the pressure that young carers take on throughout their lives. When I was at the Children’s Society, I led work on a report on the life chances of people who had been young carers and it was shocking that their educational attainment was often non-existent, which often meant their employment possibilities were also non-existent. I hope that he will work with me, and I am more than happy to join his APPG, to ensure that young carers have a voice. They tend to be the silent children who just get on with things.
The Chair
Order. We are slightly out of scope at this point. I know the hon. Member for Sheffield Central knows that, and I have given him some room to put those important points on the record.
Paul Blomfield
Thank you for that guidance, Mr Paisley. I welcome the offer to work together and I will certainly take the hon. Lady up on that.
I will draw my remarks to a close by simply asking the Minister to reflect on the need for a strategy for young carers to ensure that we are more effective in identifying them and providing the support that they need.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife on this important Bill and on making an excellent contribution. As I said not too long ago when my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central introduced another important Bill, it is very difficult for private Members’ Bills to get to this stage. Any hon. Member who manages that is worthy of tribute, as I am sure the Committee will agree. I also congratulate other hon. Members who have contributed today, some with their personal experiences, but all making an excellent case. The House is at its best when it comes together, and this is such an important issue.
The Opposition welcome and support the Bill. We welcome the support that it will provide for thousands of unpaid carers across the country. I pay tribute to and thank Carers UK for all its work in this area. As rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for North East Fife and by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, 5 million people are working as carers as well as being in full-time employment; 2.5 million people have been forced out of work because of their caring responsibilities; and more than 2 million people have been forced to reduce their hours. That is clearly an unacceptable situation.
For far too long, unpaid carers have had to rely on the goodwill of their employers or have had to take annual leave to fulfil their caring responsibilities. It is therefore right that this wrong is being addressed in the Bill. However, we lament that it has taken so long for such a Bill to appear before Parliament, given that the Government have promised to legislate on the matter for a number of years. As has been mentioned, they set out an intention for such legislation in their 2017 manifesto and again in their 2019 manifesto. It has taken five years —and only by their supporting a Back-Bench MP’s private Member’s Bill—for legislation finally to get to the Floor of the House. That should not be the case; it should have been a Government measure as part of a much broader employment Bill, which the Government have promised on a number of occasions, but it remains in a place of “in due course”, which we never see.
I am disappointed that the Bill seeks to legislate only to create a statutory right to unpaid carer’s leave, not paid carer’s leave, as Labour’s new deal for working people would do and for which we will legislate under the next Labour Government. I absolutely recognise, however, the restraint of the hon. Member for North East Fife in drafting the Bill, knowing that it must have strong support from the Government even to progress to this stage, much less to be introduced and entered on to the statute book. It has therefore been necessary to draft a Bill with a smaller scope to ensure that it is not blocked by Ministers. That is in no way to suggest that this is not a huge step in the right direction.
This is very much an enabling Bill, which will require further regulations to enact the relevant laws to benefit carers. I urge the Minister to give a timescale for and certainty about implementing such regulations. We support the Bill and we hope to see it return to the House on Report and Third Reading as soon as possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.
I thank my several predecessors who have done a lot of work on this, including my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough in her time looking after the legislation. Most of all, I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife for her work on the Bill and for her explanation to the Committee of the various clauses and schedules. It was interesting to listen to her comments—reflected by those of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport—about the fact that most people providing care, such as her husband, do not even recognise themselves as carers. Reflecting on that, we have all—or people of my age might have—been in situations where we have provided care and support on an informal basis at times. There are armies of people out there doing a wonderful job for their relatives and their dependants, with lots of other benefits for society as a result.
There were some excellent contributions from Members on both sides of the Committee. Lots of people in our constituencies are in need of such support, so it is hugely important that this piece of legislation has been introduced.
Improving carer’s leave through the Bill will mean that unpaid carers who are balancing caring alongside paid employment will have greater flexibility to take time out of work if required. On Second Reading, Members on both sides of the House, some of whom are serving on this Committee, related their personal experiences of caring. I thank them all for sharing their personal stories in heartfelt contributions. The Government recognise the important contribution made by unpaid carers and the considerable challenges they face in balancing work with their caring responsibilities. I am pleased to be here today to reiterate that the Government fully support the Bill.
Alex Cunningham
I thank the Minister for giving way, and welcome my fellow northern MP to his new role on the Front Bench. I welcome the Government’s support for the Bill. The hon. Gentleman heard my remarks about paid carer’s leave, but may I alert him to another cost-neutral Bill—my private Member’s Bill, which will have its Second Reading next Friday and which would provide protection and rights for terminally ill people?
Kevin Hollinrake
That was a wonderful piece of self-promotion, but I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments and will address the points he made.
Numerous groups of people will benefit from the entitlement conferred by this Bill, including older workers, women and those with disabilities or long-term health conditions. Whether they are providing care or in need of care, the Bill represents an important step forward in supporting their needs and giving them a better chance of remaining in work. There is also a strong business case to be made for employers supporting unpaid carers in their workforce, and some employers already provide excellent examples of this. The hon. Member for North East Fife pointed out that there are big benefits for employers in helping employees to enjoy their workplace and strengthening the connection between employer and employee. Many employers already provide carers’ rights without needing legislation requiring them to do so.
As the hon. Lady set out, the Bill is straightforward. The detail of the entitlement is contained in the schedule. The clauses and schedule give the Secretary of State new powers to make regulations entitling an employee to be absent from work in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. I will briefly explain the Government’s policy and how the regulations will be used, which was set out in the Government’s response to the consultation on carer’s leave published in September 2021.
Eligible employees will be entitled to one week of unpaid leave per year. This will be available to take flexibly, in single or half-days, to best meet the needs of unpaid carers. Reference is made in the Bill to regulations that in particular provide that an employer cannot require an employee to supply evidence in relation to a request for leave. I agree that employees should not be required to provide evidence to demonstrate their eligibility to take carer’s leave, and this will be reflected in the regulations.
The Bill provides a power to make regulations relating to notices and other procedures. Our position, set out in the Government response to the consultation, is that employees making a request to take carer’s leave should give notice to their employer. Our policy is to align the notice provision with that for annual leave—twice the duration of leave requested, plus one day, subject to a minimum of three days’ notice. The regulations will also allow employers to postpone but not deny a leave request.
I reiterate the Government’s support or the Bill, and again thank the hon. Member for North East Fife for her work in getting it to this stage. I agree that clauses 1 to 3 and parts 1 and 2 of the schedule should stand part of the Bill.
To respond to some of the comments made, the hon. Member for Stockton North talked about making the leave paid. I understand his view, but point out that this is a minimum entitlement, which sends a signal to employers who are currently not demonstrating that degree of compassion to people in need. I think many employees would provide paid leave as a matter of course. One benefit of the leave being unpaid is that it gives more flexibility about how that leave can be taken, including half-days and single days.
I would point out—I think the hon. Member for Rotherham reflected on this—the cost to business. As set out in the explanatory notes, the cost to businesses is £4.7 million in set-up costs and then £40 million per annum to provide the leave. As she said, businesses are facing a pretty hard time right now and we have to be cognisant of the pressures they are under. If businesses do not pay for this, the cost would fall on taxpayers, who are also having a pretty hard time right now, but I think the Bill strikes the right balance between flexibility and affordability.
The hon. Member for Rotherham also pointed out that there are savings for all of us in the legislation. It is good for society, good for the taxpayer, good for businesses, and it is obviously good for people in need of care.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bradford East, pointed out that the legislation has taken time to come forward, which is a fair point. We did commit to it in our 2019 manifesto—he was right to say that—but we needed to consult on these matters because other people are affected, including employers. The consultation finished in 2021. It talked about wider employment measures, and we are bringing forward various pieces of legislation. Only last week I sat on the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill Committee with the hon. Member for Barnsley Central. We have the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill, and the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill, so there is a raft of legislation we are supporting that will improve terms and conditions for employees.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye spoke touchingly of her personal experience of looking after her father in very difficult circumstances. I think many of us can share her emotions. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central talked about the incredible work that younger carers do and the impacts of that both socially and in education. He made a very fair point because that is another area that we need to look at in greater detail.
The Government continue to support measures to provide unpaid carers in work with much-needed flexibility to manage their caring responsibilities alongside remaining in work. Supporting the Bill is in line with our ongoing commitment to support workers and build a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. Member for North East Fife to support the passage of the Bill. I conclude by thanking the hon. Member for North Antrim for his excellent chairing of today’s Committee.
Wendy Chamberlain
Thank you, Mr Paisley, for your excellent chairing of the Committee this morning. I also thank the Minister and Government Members for supporting the Bill. I thank all Members for serving on the Committee. An early morning slot on a Wednesday is not the most popular time—I have helped everyone get their prayer cards in for Prime Ministers’ questions. I am grateful to all members of the Committee for being here.
I just want to touch on some of the comments made in interventions and speeches. I agree with the hon. Member for Stockton North that the Bill needs to be a first step and we should look at paid care. When we think about the other leave entitlements that are paid, this needs to be a first step. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned that we increasingly have sandwich generations, so we need to think about how we better support them. I agree with the hon. Member for Eastbourne: it is important to know that there is support in our constituencies. It is great that we are in violent agreement here, but also important that we know we reflect the wishes of our constituents.
I know how much the hon. Member for Gosport, the chair of the APPG on carers, cares about the subject, and I know about the work she has done. She commented on the love and responsibility of carers, which struck me as so many carers do it because it is a loved one that they are looking after. That responsibility and the management of the caring admin can be a real burden for people.
The hon. Member for Rotherham mentioned carers who had had no breaks in two years. It is very telling that so many carers take annual leave, or even sick leave, for caring responsibilities, and they do not self-care as a result. We need to think about how we better support them.
My friend the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye spoke of her personal experiences of palliative care, which we should all think about. We want to provide care for our loved ones, particularly at end of life, and I hope the Government will look favourably on her comments.
I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central that, having met Fife Young Carers, I am very conscious of the burden that is placed on young carers, and of how that caring burden can prevent them from realising their own future potential in the workplace and so on. How do we help with that?
The Bill is a vital piece of legislation that will support unpaid carers. From the conversations today and on Second Reading, it is clear that there is much more to be done, but I believe that this is an important first step towards easing some of the burden, and I look forward to continuing to work with everybody present.
I am grateful to Members for their congratulations. I am very conscious of the fact that getting a private Member’s Bill to this stage requires working with the Government to find areas of consensus and look at the scope of the Bill, but I got a white ball with my number on it pulled out of a glass jar. That is how we started this private Member’s Bill journey, so luck always comes into it to some extent.
The Chair
I thank the hon. Member for those kind comments about this historic Bill Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 2 and 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule agreed to.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
Carer’s Leave Bill
Friday 3rd February 2023
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Carer's Leave Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on ensuring that his Bill has gone through its remaining stages and now passes to the other place—I hope to feel the same sense of achievement shortly. I am conscious that some in the Chamber today who are looking to speak will have personal experience of caring for a relative or other dependant, and I am very grateful for their participation in today’s debate. With the leave of the House, I will save my other thanks for later on, but the number of Members who have spoken out about their experiences during the course of the Bill’s progress has brought to life how widespread caring is for so many, both in this House and outwith. It is wonderful that following Second Reading and Committee, we have time to debate this important issue again today.
Statistics from the 2020-21 family resources survey show that approximately 4.2 million people across the UK are providing unpaid care by looking after an elderly or disabled family member or another dependant, and that the majority of those individuals are women aged over 50. In the previous debate, there was much conversation about how we get people back into the workplace; we know that the Government have a particular focus on those aged over 50, so I am very hopeful that they will continue to support my Bill, because I believe it will help towards that goal.
The reality is that becoming a carer is something that can happen to any one of us. Caring is a reality for many millions of people across the UK. It can take many forms: it can be day-to-day physical caring, washing, dressing and feeding for those who cannot care for themselves; it can be making medical appointments or arranging for paid care; it can even just be doing the shopping for a housebound elderly neighbour. Caring or being cared for is something that almost everyone will experience at some point in their life.
However, sadly, Carers UK research found in 2021 that 37% of working carers said that they needed unpaid carer’s leave in order to manage working and caring, and a further one in seven said that without carer’s leave, they would have to reduce their working hours or give up work altogether. Those statistics become even starker when we talk to carers of those with more debilitating conditions, such as multiple sclerosis. The preliminary findings of a recent survey of unpaid carers by the MS Society found that 13% of respondents had given up working and 20% had taken early retirement due to their caring responsibilities. Over two thirds said that their work had been impacted due to the help they provided to their loved one with MS.
My own experience, going out to my constituents to see if I could find people who would benefit from this legislation, brings those statistics to life. So many carers in North East Fife got in touch with me to say that they had already given up work because of their caring responsibilities. I very much hope that the Bill will help encourage some of those people to find a way back to work, and therefore make a contribution to the economy as well as providing that vital care.
The new employment rights in the Bill are vital at a time when the Government are trying to get people, especially the over-50s, back to work. I firmly believe that they will also help businesses, many of which are already under significant financial strain without the costs of staff turnover and continued recruitment. The successful passage of the Bill will be a significant milestone: carer’s leave will provide increased flexibility to unpaid carers who are balancing paid employment with their caring responsibilities. It will enable them to take some time out of work if required, which will support them to stay in work because, vitally, they will not have to choose between caring and working.
The Bill creates a new entitlement for employees to take up to a week of unpaid leave a year in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. I certainly hope that, for example, things such as regular hospital appointments—those planned things that carers know are potentially going to happen—can be made easier by the provisions in the Bill.
All employees who meet the eligibility conditions will be entitled to that unpaid leave, regardless of how long they have worked for their employer. That means that the entitlement will be available to eligible employees from the first day of their employment, which is critical in overcoming the hurdles that carers experience when re-entering the workplace, or even when changing jobs—that was talked about in the previous debate by, I think, the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra). I was a police officer, and when I joined the police at the age of 22, I firmly expected to spend 30 years in the police service, but that is not how it has worked out. Portfolio careers—people moving between jobs—are increasingly becoming a feature of everyday working life. The Bill will help support that, because people will know that they can take its provisions into different jobs.
The leave will be available to take flexibly, in half-day increments. Importantly for employers and employees, there will be no requirement to provide evidence in relation to a request for carer’s leave. That will make it easier for carers to take the leave and also benefit employers, as they will not have to deal with potential data protection issues, such as holding third-party medical details. Having worked in human resources, I know that will also help with the psychological contract, because if employees feel that their employers trust them in relation to taking the leave, that will help build up the good relationships that are so important in the workplace.
Employees taking carer’s leave will have the same employment protections associated with other forms of family-related leave. That includes protection from dismissal or detriment as a result of having taken the leave. Bringing carer’s leave together with those other forms of leave and making employment protections consistent makes it easier for businesses to administer and for employees to understand.
Importantly, the rights will be available to carers who do all types of caring for different sorts of people. The definition is simple: they must be managing the care of a dependent who requires long-term care. The Bill does not use the usual narrow definition of “dependent” and includes anyone who may
“reasonably rely on the employee to provide or arrange care”.
That could be care for a spouse, civil partner, child or parent—my husband is a carer for his own mother—but it could also be care for someone who lives in the same household as the employee, such as a tenant or a lodger, or even a next-door neighbour or an elderly couple down the road. One of the positives of covid—I always hesitate to use the word “positive” about covid—was the community spirit it engendered, and the help people gave to others in their communities; the Bill encourages that spirit. Such a broad definition will ensure that a highly diverse range of caring relationships are in the scope of the leave entitlements.
The definition of “long-term care need” is also broad. It includes disability, but it also encompasses a person with
“an illness or injury (whether physical or mental) that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months”.
In addition, it includes a person requiring care for any reason connected with old age, so the definition is all encompassing.
I firmly believe that carer’s leave is a right that has to work for businesses as well as for carers, for employers as well as for employees. While the leave is designed to be flexible and to fit around the day-to-day lives of carers, employees still need to give reasonable notice. The notice requirements broadly follow those for taking annual leave, so again they are easy to understand from both sides.
Carer’s leave is a right to have, rather than a right to request. However, the Bill recognises that there may be circumstances when granting leave will be difficult, so an employer will be able to postpone but not deny the leave. That allows the space for employers and employees to come to arrangements that work best for both parties.
Over recent months, I have had the privilege of meeting some businesses that already have carer’s leave in place, in order to learn how carer’s leave works for them. I have learned that being carer friendly is not only not a detriment to businesses, but actually helps them. Employees who feel supported are more motivated and loyal. The cost savings on recruitment and additional productivity easily counterbalance any minor administration costs. On Twitter this morning, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said it supports the Bill. I am a former associate member of that institute, but it is telling that the main body for HR in the UK recognises that the Bill is good for business and for its members. That tells us that the Bill is taking the right steps.
Many other hon. Members have also met with companies that are in favour of carer’s leave, as I found out at the drop-in I sponsored last week. I thank the representatives of TSB and Centrica, who came to Parliament, for giving up their time to share their experiences with us. Carers UK runs an effective employers group and it is good to hear those positive stories.
Every experience of caring is unique. Without statutory employment rights, everyone’s experience of dealing with their employer will differ. Some employers will be excellent in their support, others indifferent and many more somewhere in between. The Bill will benefit everyone, no matter where they are on that scale.
One key thing that came across in speaking to constituents and others who are carers was the in-built guilt they have as a carer. On the one hand, they feel guilty because they cannot give the care they want to give to their loved one or dependent. On the other hand, they feel guilt dealing with their employer to ask for time off, potentially unpaid, and feeling they are not making a full contribution. Hopefully, the Bill will help to mitigate some of that.
One such constituent was Judith, who I spoke with last week to hear about her experience of caring and what the Bill would mean for her. She is currently working four days a week, hoping to move to three days, and is in positive conversations with her employer. She is responsible for her elderly father who, having had a tumour removed last year, has had more and more frequent hospital trips for treatment arising from that. His most recent visit lasted over a week and has left him very disorientated since he came out of hospital. Judith feels lucky in that she has been able to take unpaid leave from work, but she does feel that guilt I referenced and feels worried that the good will of her employer will not last for ever.
As I mentioned earlier, carer’s leave as a right to have, not a right to request, should help—that is the key thing here. Judith does not yet have it as a right to have. The Bill will give her that, take away the guilt of asking work for time off and remove the worry of what might happen next. The reality is that the situation will only get more difficult for Judith and her family. Indeed, her brother has made the decision to give up work and rely on his pension. That is a very noble thing to do, and within the family they are all sharing the load, but it demonstrates, on trying to keep people in the workplace, that we have much more still to do to help enable people to continue to do both work and caring.
I have heard from employers who believe that this new employment right will be the catalyst for starting conversations about caring. Even within carer- friendly organisations, getting people to talk about their responsibilities, or simply to even recognise themselves as carers, can be a challenge. This new employment right makes caring as ordinary a part of working life as taking a sick day with covid or maternity leave after a baby. It will be a huge shift in how we understand carers. I have previously mentioned that the largest employer in my constituency, the University of St Andrews, has very good policies in place, but it recognised, when looking at the Bill, that it did not necessarily bring them all together properly. What happened was that people were coming to their line manager when they hit a crisis point, as opposed to engaging at an earlier stage to get the support they needed that meant their family did not hit that crisis point.
At the other end of the spectrum, for carers whose employers do not have any policies in place to support them, the new law will be a vital first step, both in the actual leave they can take and in feeling seen and supported in work. The multiple sclerosis survey I referenced earlier found that of carers who are currently employed, only 5.2% had been offered advice or support to help them stay in work. That is simply atrocious, and I hope the Bill will spark those conversations. Importantly, although carer’s leave entering law will feel like an end, it is also a start.
There is still so much more we can do to support unpaid carers. In the long run, I hope most companies will offer paid carer’s leave and that we may even get a statutory entitlement to such. We must fund day centres and reform carer’s allowance, so that carers can potentially earn more before that allowance drops off. As I said to the Prime Minister before Christmas, the caring never stops.
We can also do so much more to help carers into work through training and support. With the Carers Trust, I visited Camden Carers last week to learn about a project called Working for Carers, which is focused specifically on getting carers who have left the workplace because of their caring responsibilities back into the workplace. I met two participants, one of whom, Nicola, as a result of the help she had received, was setting up her own business, while the other, Amanda, was returning to work in education as a classroom assistant. It is proof that in the right conditions carers can work and be highly valuable to our economy.
This is an incredible day to see the Bill through its final Commons stages. I have had lots of “Well done, Wendy”, but I am very conscious that getting this opportunity starts with a number being drawn out of a big glass bowl. So there is a degree of luck, but I firmly believe it is what we do with that luck afterwards that is important. I very much hope the Minister will rise to confirm the Government’s continued support for the Bill. As anyone who has brought a private Member’s Bill will know, there is a certain level of anxiety in seeing your Bill go off to the other place without you, but I am confident that my colleague Lord Fox of Leominster will be an excellent guardian of the Bill and I thank him for taking it on. I will leave it there, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I hope to speak again later, with the leave of the House.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on not only her luck in having her name drawn out of the hat, but the drafting and presentation of the Bill, which I am delighted to support.
More than 4 million people in this country are unpaid carers for loved ones, and most of them are women over the age of 50. They are very common to us all as constituency MPs. I can think of several people who have been in touch with me about not only the challenges they face in getting support, but the just challenges of what it means to be an unpaid carer. We can all do everything that we can as legislators to ensure that the support for them is better than it is and that the process, particularly for applying for help, is smoother, but the reality is that, as the hon. Lady said, they work all the hours there are. Ultimately, they are dependent on themselves, their friends and family and their support networks. I honour them for everything that they do. In a sense, they are the backbone of our country and our communities and the foundation of our national life. In the words of Queen, they “make the rockin’ world go round” and I honour them for that—[Interruption.] I did not quote the whole lyric. [Laughter.]
The Bill is welcome and I am pleased that the Government support it. Of course, we made a commitment in our manifesto and there were plans in 2019 to introduce a Bill along these lines. It is shame that it has taken this long to get here, but I am pleased that we are supporting it. The fact is that many employers extend these sorts of flexibilities to their staff anyway, because they are good people. I was struck by what the Minister said in response to the previous debate about the importance that employers such as him place on their reputation. Their primary reputation is based on what their staff—the people who work with them and know them best as employers—say about them. That reputation matters hugely, so it is no surprise that we all come across employers who do the right thing and are flexible with and sympathetic to their staff with caring responsibilities. As the Minister and the hon. Lady said, it helps the business to be a good employer in this way. It is not all about selfless action on the behalf of employers—even Yorkshire employers.
I am particularly struck by the provision, supported by the Government, for carer’s leave to be a day-one right. That is essential and reflects the fact that this is an important principle: it is something that is not earned through length of service but extended to an employee on day one. The value is not just for the employee but for the company, because it will help so much with recruitment in our very tight labour market. With all the social challenges that exist in our society, there are huge numbers of people who would like to work but for whom their caring responsibility comes first. For them to know that they will have the flexibility that the Bill gives them from day one is an enormous incentive for them to apply and take a job that is offered. It is, then, absolutely right for employers and the economy that we make this change.
That said, we obviously need to be careful. I look forward to seeing what the Government do in the drafting of the regulations that will bring this change into force. As I understand it, the regulations will determine how long the right to carer’s leave will be. It will be at least a week, but it could be longer, and I could totally support that, because in many cases it will need to be much longer than that. It probably should not be 365 days a year, because we do have to worry about people who take the mickey.
That leads me to my next point, which is that we currently have significant problems in our labour force and labour market. Too many people are not getting into work, and although I very much hope that this Bill will help to address that challenge, we do need further reform to our welfare system. I am not satisfied by the rate of success that we get out of our welfare system. Sadly, for all the great work done by many jobcentres and many of the civil society organisations that support them, the success rate of transforming an unemployed person into an employed person nevertheless remains too slow. We have to make work pay, and the Government are rightly prioritising a number of reforms and changes that need to happen to enable that. We need a higher-wage economy in which work pays better than welfare. We need to strengthen the conditionality around certain benefits to ensure that people understand that benefits are dependent on them looking for work and taking work when it is offered. We also need greater flexibility in the arrangements that people have in their employment.
I will end with a general point, to which the Bill speaks very well. My concern about our whole economic model and the way in which we conceive of work is that we have a very individualistic attitude to what we are as a worker. We think that work and life are separate spheres and that when we are an employee—a worker—our private life has no bearing on our work. In a sense, we can understand that. People need to leave their home life behind when they come to work; we all have to do that in our jobs. We need to be a professional. However, it is not fair to say that people have these entirely separate spheres.
As the hon. Lady emphasised in her speech, people increasingly live a portfolio life. Life changes for all of us; things happen. It is right that the system recognises that, for all that we have to be a professional, for all that we should be seen as a responsible, accountable and autonomous individual, we have overlapping responsibilities in our lives of which the system should take note. Principally, that means that people need to understand the challenges that we have around time, and the obligations that may occasionally intrude on the time we can give to our employment.
I applaud the provision that the hon. Lady hopes will be in the regulations, which is to extend the rights to people who have responsibilities to their neighbours—obligations and relationships outside the home. I think that that is absolutely right. She mentioned the great benefit of covid. We should acknowledge that good things happened as a result of the lockdown, which was the way that neighbourhoods were strengthened and obligations to people who we might not have known well before suddenly became real. We need to recover and retain some of that spirit and neighbourliness, and the Bill might help with that.
Best of all is the support that the Bill gives to family life. We need to recognise families and the obligations that we have to our relations, our children, and our elderly dependants much more in the general system of regulation. I recognise that, through the benefit reform, which the Conservative-led Government over the past 10 years introduced, universal credit now properly recognises family obligations in the benefit system. The next stage is to recognise family obligations in the tax system, which, at the moment, remains much too individualistic and disregards the obligations that people have.
Almost every other comparable country—European and north American—recognises family obligations in the tax system. Uniquely, the UK does not. The result is that people with young children or with adult dependants are penalised through the tax system in a way that in other countries they are supported, and, fundamentally, that is what we need to change. I honour the hon. Lady’s Bill and very much look forward to supporting it.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
I rise to commend this excellent Bill. It is what I would call a no-brainer —an easy win. I will, if I may, make two quick points about the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). First, it must be a great thing to have a private Member’s Bill that is being adopted by the incumbent Government. That is great. The Bill is so good that we have taken it as our own, and I thank her so much for that.
More broadly, I wish to commend her—and perhaps to embarrass her—for the very objective way that she engages with the House, particularly with the veterans’ community and the all-party parliamentary group on veterans on which we serve. It is really great when the House comes together for this particular purpose. Fridays are always good for that. This is a really good Bill to get behind and support for the reasons that have been outlined.
I wish to make two points on the Bill itself. First, we know that it creates an entitlement for employees to be absent from work on unpaid leave to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. That is great. What I also like is that it will take its place in that suite of other protections that we have in law including: maternity; paternity; adoption; parental bereavement; and shared parental and parental leave. That is indicative of a Government who care. We are endorsing this Bill and have taken it as our own, with full credit to the hon. Member for North East Fife. The Bill also includes protection from dismissal or detriment because of having taken the leave, and it is good that that can be applied retrospectively if an employee has particular difficulty with an employer. That is a good thing.
I am very privileged to serve Bracknell. Bracknell Forest is a great place to work, live and play, and it has brilliant people. I am constantly meeting people in the constituency who care for others. I want to plug what we have locally. In 2021, 4.2% of Bracknell Forest residents reported providing up to 19 hours of unpaid care each week. We ignore these fantastic people—these heroes—at our peril. All of us are looking after somebody all the time, and it is amazing that we can provide a bit of extra assistance in law through this Bill.
I meet people in the Lexicon, in Bracknell town centre and on my travels, and I am blown away by the charity sector and the sense of community in Bracknell. It is completely unsurpassed by anywhere else I have been, and I am an old boy now, so I have been around a bit. Bracknell is a brilliant place with great people, and I thank everyone in Bracknell who is providing this care for others; it is so important.
I want to mention a couple of caveats with regard to the Bill. The hon. Member for North East Fife said that sufficient notice has to be given to employers. Actually, I would like to see a provision in the Bill that allows a carer to not be in the workplace at short notice if an unforeseen event takes place. It is difficult, because employers have to be given notice, but perhaps we could write further flexibility into the Bill so that, instead of these slots being bolted on to annual leave, they could be taken on an ad hoc basis. It equates to five full days or 10 half-days in one year. Why could we not write it into the Bill that, if something happens at short notice, the employee would be covered in law for half a day or a day at a time?
We cannot write a blank cheque for who the Bill applies to. We need to make sure that it relates to support for a nominated individual or individuals; it cannot just be a person living down the road or a neighbour. I want to see a bit more protection for employers in the Bill, so that the package of support is for named individuals who need that support.
Employment protections such as this will mean that more people who are carers can go back to the workplace. If they have this flexibility and extra support, they will go back into the workplace and want to be at work, because they know they can get away if they have to provide care for somebody. It will boost the UK economy. Our ageing population needs more support, and ultimately, this will mean that people who are caring for perhaps a parent or parents have the flexibility they need.
It is important that we do everything possible to entice people back into the workplace, and this support might help. We have 1.5 million job vacancies across the UK, and fewer people are in the workplace than were before the pandemic. In my constituency and in the south-east more broadly, we have so many job vacancies—employers are crying out for staff. It may be that, with this extra provision in law, people will be encouraged to go back into the workplace even if they are caring for other people. It is a no-brainer. Once again, I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife. Let us support the Bill.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for bringing the Bill back to the House for its remaining stages. In Blackpool, over 16,000 people provide unpaid care to somebody else. As a consequence of our ageing population, more and more people are now acting as carers for a loved one. That obviously puts pressure on hard-working families, many of whom struggle with balancing their work commitments and other obligations with providing that care. Indeed, according to figures from Carers UK, one in seven people in the UK are finding it difficult at present to juggle work and care responsibilities.
The most significant aspect of the Bill is enabling those with elderly or disabled loved ones to take time away from work when unforeseen circumstances arise that necessitate them stepping in and providing that care. Many constituents have told me of the frustration they often feel when the local authority or the NHS care provider cancels existing arrangements at quite short notice. Such a situation leaves families frantically attempting to find alternative care or face the repercussions of not attending work. This Bill, among other things, helps to address that situation. It would mitigate the anxiety for those receiving care and for their families.
As the time off would be without reimbursement, it would leave employers at a minimal disadvantage. It is for those reasons that I believe that the Bill strikes a reasonable compromise to both employers and employees. Proposed new section 80J in part 5 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 recommends that such leave should not be taken continuously. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the section and consider how to mitigate the risks of employees potentially abusing the goodwill of their employers by taking large amounts of unexpected leave for any reason. I look forward to his comments when he sums up.
The Bill is a positive step forward to support carers and to allow them to juggle their responsibilities, allowing them to stay in the workplace but also provide care, which relieves the pressure on stakeholders such as the NHS and local authorities. But it will also have an impact on businesses, particularly small businesses that may operate only with a few members staff at any one time and may find it difficult to bring in other staff to cover a leave of absence, especially at short notice.
During the passage of the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill, the Minister mentioned his own experience from business, saying that a business’s reputation is not only how it treats its customers but how it treats its staff. I think that is very much the case. Although I am sure that the vast majority of businesses would stand by their staff and make sure that they can balance their respective work, personal and care responsibilities, there could be a small minority of people who try to take advantage of those arrangements. We have to appreciate the additional costs that the Bill could entail to businesses, while bringing in positive steps to make sure that carers have the flexibility to look after their loved ones.
In our 2019 manifesto, this Government promised that they would
“extend the entitlement to leave for unpaid carers, the majority of whom are women, to one week.”
The Queen’s Speech in December 2019 set out about how we would fulfil that important manifesto commitment. A subsequent consultation was launched on 16 March 2020, which sought views on the Government’s proposals for an entitlement to carers leave. Responses to that consultation were published 18 months later.
The Government remain committed to ensuring that they extend workers’ rights—we have just seen that in their support for the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill and, once again, in their support for this Bill. In his comments on that Bill, the Minister alluded to the fact that it is often this party that advances workers’ rights. We have a long and proud history of doing that. Despite some of the ridiculous comments from the commentariat and Members in this House, not least on Monday during the passage of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, once again it is this Government who lead the way on protecting working people and ensuring that they have rights at work, while delivering economic growth. That is why I am proud to support not only this Bill but this Government.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton). I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on her excellent and comprehensive speech in which she covered a huge range of issues. It is great to see the second Bill in a row that is doing more for women and has women particularly in mind, because they will benefit predominantly from the hon. Lady’s Bill. As has been said, approximately 4.2 million people across the UK are providing unpaid care at the moment. More than half of those carers are providing that care alongside their job, so there clearly is a huge number of people who are not working and who will not be impacted by this legislation, but we should always keep them in mind. This is going to be a hugely important Bill for those working who can only use annual leave or other forms of leave to help with caring responsibilities. I think it will be life-changing for them, and it also recognises what they are doing.
“Long-term care need” is defined as including any illness or injury likely to require at least three months of care, any disability under the Equality Act 2010 or any reasons connected with old age. I looked up the list of conditions that are described as disability under the Equality Act 2010, and I think they would come as a surprise to many people who are caring just because it is part of their life and it is their family situation and experience. They probably do not even know that the conditions those they are caring for have would qualify. The list includes sensory impairments, such as with sight and hearing, rheumatoid arthritis, ME, chronic fatigue syndrome, progressive conditions such as motor neurone disease, muscular dystrophy and forms of dementia, respiratory conditions and organ conditions, developmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, learning disabilities, mental health conditions, mental illnesses and conditions produced by injury, including to the brain. There is a list of exceptions, too, but I think if people went and had a look at that list, they might be surprised that they qualify under this new legislation.
As the mother of a child with special educational needs, I know just how many appointments I needed to take my son to as he was being diagnosed, and it was over a long time and across different parts of the country. These are the things parents have to do to help children with long-term conditions. I know that the number of young people struggling with mental health illnesses is particularly high, and they are struggling to get support. This Bill will impact them.
I was delighted to hear that the Bill will go wider than just the family and go into the community, too. Before I became a Member of Parliament, I was a volunteer in my village of Ewhurst with an organisation called Ewcare, and the volunteers particularly looked after elderly people. They took them to their auditory appointments and their sight test appointments, but they also did things like, as I did, visiting people who are by themselves in the home. They had carers coming in, but the lady I was looking after, who was 93, had to go into hospital for repeated urinary tract infections. One of my jobs was to go in and bring her glasses that she had left at home so that she could read things while she was having her hospital care. The caring goes out into the community—it is much wider than the family—and it is incredibly important that the Bill recognises that we may have elderly neighbours for whom we have a regular responsibility.
It was great to see that Employers for Carers has said about this Bill:
“Employers who already have Carer’s Leave in place say that it’s a win-win situation, to support and retain key employees in the workplace, helping to keep business going and avoiding extra costs. The most forward-thinking employers go one step further and have provided Carer’s Leave as a paid entitlement.”
This Bill is slightly different from that, because my understanding is that the entitlement is unpaid, but the fact that we have employers already providing this good level of service is great. Through legislation, we can ensure that every employer provides it to their workers.
In conclusion, I will be supporting this Bill today. It is incredibly important that we keep pushing forward the rights of workers, and it builds on the Conservative party manifesto in 2019, which I have already referenced, where we said we would
“extend the entitlement to leave for unpaid carers, the majority of whom are women, to one week.”
It also builds on the Queen’s Speech in December 2019, which committed to introducing these measures. It is great to see that, working constructively with Government and Back-Bench colleagues from all parties, we can successfully act on the commitments that we made in 2019.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome the Bill and congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on introducing this important legislation and getting it to this stage before it, hopefully, wings its way down the corridor to the other place. I also pay tribute to the millions of people across the country, and particularly the thousands of people in North West Norfolk, who provide care for some of our most vulnerable people. We all know from personal experience and talking to constituents the toll that providing care can take not just on mental and physical wellbeing, but on people’s household finances and other responsibilities, including, of course, their jobs.
I would also like to recognise Carers UK for the vital work it does in supporting carers and for its tireless campaigning in favour of a statutory right of leave for carers. Juggling caring responsibilities and work is incredibly challenging and can limit the participation of unpaid carers in the marketplace. As Carers UK has said, the stresses and strains of having to juggle paid work alongside unpaid care have led to hundreds of thousands of people leaving the labour market entirely. On average, 600 people a day leave work to care. As well as it helping with people’s wellbeing, the record levels of vacancies in the job market mean that it is vital we do everything we can to support unpaid carers to remain in work with this greater flexibility.
The Bill helps to address the challenges that carers face and tackle a long-running issue. Back in 2017, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions concluded that there was a strong case for carer’s leave. The 2019 Conservative manifesto, on which I was elected, included commitments to introduce leave for carers, and in 2020 the Government consulted on proposals to give employees a week of unpaid leave each year to provide care. As was discussed in the previous debate, there was an employment Bill in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, which for understandable reasons has not been taken forward. It is very welcome that another of the baby bells from breaking up that employment Bill will now go forward.
As I mentioned, Carers UK has campaigned for many years for the statutory right to leave. It said:
“The Bill would help support unpaid carers to remain in work. Given the current cost of living crisis, there has never been a more important time to do so. It would also bring significant benefits to business, and the wider economy.”
The impact of the Bill is significant. It gives rights to millions of people who have unpaid caring responsibilities, supporting them to remain in work and improving their health and wellbeing. It would mean that some 1.4 million employers to whom this applies would have to think about their employees and their caring responsibilities, and also the opportunity to boost retention and recruitment by doing so.
Since being elected to the House just over three years ago, I have worked with local organisations that support carers, including the Motor Neurone Disease Association, as well as West Norfolk Carers, for whom I was pleased to run the London Marathon a couple of years ago. I finished as the fastest English MP, out of interest, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) was a few minutes ahead of me. Sue Heal, a volunteer with the Norfolk, Norwich and Waveney branch of MNDA, with whom I have worked, emailed me this week to say:
“Recent research conducted by the MND Association found MND carers are physically and mentally exhausted, unable to access breaks and impacted financially. Many are also juggling caring with work and additional responsibilities.”
She asked me to support the Bill on behalf of MND sufferers and their carers and I am very pleased to do so today.
Caring Together, a local charity that works across Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, wrote to me a couple of weeks ago also urging me to support the Bill and urging the Government to do so as well. They also called for the leave to be paid, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said, some employers will chose to do that. We hope that that is a direction that people will go in. The charity said that carers can get isolated, depressed, ill, and out of touch with family and friends. Therefore, I welcome the Government’s support for the Bill, which demonstrates commitment to carers.
The Bill would amend the Employment Rights Act 1996, requiring the Secretary of State to create, by regulations, a new statutory entitlement to carer’s leave. The Bill would require that any such leave entitlement must be at least one week per year. Importantly, as others have said, this leave would be a day one right, available to all employees without any qualifying period. It would apply to anyone caring for a spouse, civil partner, child, parent or other dependant with a long-term care need, and it would be able to be taken flexibly. I think this is a model piece of legislation.
This is a welcome change in employment law, but, again, it necessitates employees and employers knowing about the changes in advance, preparing for them and making sure that they are implemented most effectively. I understand that it is expected that the regulations will be laid and commenced in 2024, and I am sure the Minister will use the time between now and then to consult carers and employers properly to ensure that the legislation works and there is simple, easy-to-access guidance on the new rights.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that these changes will form part of a wider package of support for carers, with the Government’s continuing to support the implementation of improved rights, as enshrined in the Care Act 2014. For example, I welcome the White Paper on social care, which outlined measures to support carers, including up to £25 million to kick-start a change in services, so that they can access respite, breaks and wellbeing support. The new integrated care boards—my local one is the Norfolk and Waveney ICB—will have a duty to involve carers when care is commissioned for their loved one. Taken together, these measures are helping to form a package of support that will ensure that carers can access the services they need, when they need them, and that carers are helped to balance their own lives, including employment, with caring responsibilities. I am very pleased to support this Bill.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), who has promoted the Bill and spoken eloquently, both today and in previous stages of its consideration, about the need for its provisions. I will be supporting the Bill today. As has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), who, unfortunately is no longer in his place, the Bill would have a positive impact on the lives of approximately 4.2 million people across Great Britain who currently provide unpaid care for a dependant. I say Great Britain, because of course employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland.
Many important contributions have already been made, both today and on Second Reading. I was unable to attend the Second Reading debate, so I read through Hansard in preparation for today. I was struck by a number of the contributions made then and I wish to draw the House’s attention to the one made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey). He pointed out that at the beginning of the pandemic
“unpaid carers saved the state £135 billion.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 997.]
The term “billions” is bandied about a lot these days and we have become a little numb to it, as though billions of pounds sterling were a mere trifle. The reality is that we are talking about a colossal sum. To put it into context, it is 58 times the amount of money the UK sent in military aid to Ukraine in 2022 and it is equivalent to three times our annual defence spending. So if my hon. Friend is correct, and I have no reason to doubt that he is, that alone makes a very strong case for the potential positive impact of the Bill on our society and economy.
I also wish to pay tribute to colleagues who have spoken about their constituents’ experiences, and indeed about their own personal experiences, as unpaid carers. I was particularly moved to read the comments made on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who spoke about the devastating situation he faced as a young man in his 20s having to provide care for both of his parents, who were at that time suffering from cancer. That was an important contribution to the debate and it helped to illustrate vividly why we need this Bill to be made into law. Many across the country are fortunate enough not to have had to face such experiences, but, as he said,
“dependency on care can be sudden.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 1000.]
It is important that we in this House make sure that the British people can be confident that they will not be penalised for doing the right thing when they take time off to help a loved one if and when the time arises. That is precisely what I believe this Bill seeks to achieve.
As my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool South (Scott Benton), for Guildford (Angela Richardson) and for North West Norfolk (James Wild) have all pointed out, both the 2017 and 2019 Conservative manifestos included a commitment on entitlement to unpaid leave for carers. This was also included in the Queen’s Speech of 2019, in the employment Bill, which, unfortunately was not able to proceed because of the onset of the pandemic. The hon. Member for North East Fife is to be congratulated on and thanked for bringing this Bill to the House, and I am glad that the Government have agreed to support it.
I turn to aspects of the Bill that it is important we keep under review. I draw attention to the impact assessment published in July last year. The Bill seeks to help employers through a regulatory approach. That, in practical terms, means more rules for businesses and employers to comply with and, whether we like it or not, a small increase in administrative costs. The impact assessment estimates those costs as follows: a one-off cost to large businesses of adapting of about £4.7 million; and an annual cost to business of about £40 million. Of that, £9.3 million would be costs imposed on small businesses for administering leave among other things.
If we consider, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk said, that there were 5.5 million small businesses in our country in 2021 and that, of those, about 1.4 million had employees, we must take into account that the employers with the highest number of employees will be paying the lion’s share of those costs. It must be admitted that the costs are slight, but they could affect the decision making of employers weighing up whether to take on new staff. The impact assessment cannot quantify the cost of unintended consequences of the day one right or the fact that employees will not be required to provide evidence to request leave. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes said, we need to be on our guard to ensure that the right is not abused.
However, I am anxious not to make perfect the enemy of the good. The potential additional costs are a tiny fraction of what unpaid carers save the state and our economy. The Bill has great potential and, if we strike the right balance, we will get much-needed reassurance to so many people who might be worried about losing their job if they are faced with the agonising prospect of having no one to provide care for a loved one. This is a compassionate and well-intentioned Bill, and one that is clearly needed. I will consequently be supporting it today.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, especially having heard all the contributions from around the House. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on promoting the Bill and on her stewardship in getting it to this stage. As others have said—this is similar to our debate on the previous Bill—this is a really important piece of legislation, affecting about 4.2 million people across the country. I should probably declare an interest as my parents are getting to a stage in their lives where caring responsibilities will be required. I totally endorse the view on family life given by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and will build on it, because the quality of care is typically better and has healthier outcomes when provided by a family member—a loved one; someone who is known and trusted and who understands the nuances of how the person has led most of their life. When I visit my parents, their eyes light up, not necessarily because I can do any more than professional carers but because they see a reassuring face and someone they know that they can inherently trust to do the best for them.
Since my election to this place, we have had various debates about the health and social care system. This is an integral part of that network, which has a complex landscape. However, I think it is fair—fairness, in my eyes, is a main driver for the Government—that when people are doing the right thing by supporting their loved ones, the state, were appropriate, gives them the opportunity to do so. While they will be sacrificing their salary for those unpaid days, they are doing the right thing by stepping up for their loved ones.
As a culture, we are very different from other parts of the world. Typically, our households are not multi-generational where once they were, so when loved ones get involved more actively in supporting their elder parents, their young children who may need additional support or their siblings, the Government and the nation should do all they can to help provide for that.
Carers UK reports that, on average, 600 people a day leave work to care. Its 2019 report found that about 2 million adults had reduced their working hours to cope with their need to care. The point that I would echo is the stitch-in-time principle: where a person makes the sacrifice early and gets involved in the caring responsibility before it becomes too difficult, that leads to better outcomes for that person as well as for their loved one in terms of the stress related to looking after loved ones.
James Sunderland
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent speech. He has an absolute gift for bringing human experience to life, and listening to him is always great. Is there a risk that people applying for jobs may be prevented from getting that job or discriminated against because they say that they are carers? We perhaps need to look a little more at not requiring potential employees to declare that they are carers.
Mr Mohindra
My hon. and gallant Friend is absolutely right to highlight that potential issue. The way I would read it, however—to go back to what the Minister said in the previous debate—is that reputation matters. For an employer, when an employee says that they have caring responsibilities, it shows loyalty. In my experience, it shows that the employee is more loyal, passionate and eager to do a good job when they are at work. If someone approached me for a job today and flexible working were part of their requirements, I would regard that as an asset. Part of the challenge is educating employers to understand that it is a benefit to have someone with that skillset in their workforce. It is, in my eyes, more important to be effective at work than just to clock in and out.
Let me continue humanising this story. I was contacted by Susan Graham, one of my constituents, a couple of years ago. She told me her personal story:
“I have been caring for my husband who was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease 10 years ago. I have had to leave work to care for him and try to find other ways to help with our financial needs for our family.”
The fact that she has had to reach out to her constituency MP—despite the support that great third-party organisations and the voluntary sector can provide—is strong evidence that we need to do more. The Bill from the hon. Member for North East Fife is part of the long-term-solution jigsaw. I know that the Minister will understand that there will probably be an evolution in future legislation as a consequence of the Bill, but we need to balance that with employers and combat any unintended consequences.
A lot of work has been done in this particular policy area. Back in 2017, the Work and Pensions Committee found that carers often choose between taking a sick day or using a day’s annual leave. The Committee concluded that there was
“a strong case for five days’ statutory paid carer’s leave based on the existing statutory leave system.”
That is where I think this place does excellent work. Although we are all eager to make a positive impact on people’s lives, our work needs to be evidence-based and involve all sides of the debate. In my experience, Select Committees are typically a good way of doing that, as are all-party parliamentary groups.
Information gathered for the 2021 census showed that 92,781 people in Hertfordshire provided care to friends and family. That number is just a portion of the national one, which shows the huge scale of the matter. The organisation Carers in Hertfordshire supports people who care for family or friends with physical or learning disabilities, dementia, mental health problems and much more. It has approximately 32,500 registered carers, so caring affects a huge number of people. Open Door, an excellent charity in my constituency, hosts a “memory café” every Friday. I have attended and seen at first hand the excellent work that it does by ensuring that those who are suffering have a support network. It also allows carers to get a bit of respite from the 24/7 challenges that they face. I take this opportunity to thank each and every one of those organisations and all the carers throughout the country.
To return to the topic of employers, we need to legislate properly, but we also need to ensure that this is not a one-sided debate. I referred earlier to my own experiences as a small business owner. We need to be conscious that although the unpaid aspect of the legislation is important, the time off may have a material impact on smaller businesses. I therefore think that the pro rata five days’ annual leave is proportionate. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) suggested that it could be 10 half-days, and I think that is appropriate, because things are sometimes a bit ad hoc when a family carer needs to step up and help someone with, for instance, an appointment.
Employers who support their employees have lower staff turnover. In my experience, it inevitably takes a bit of time for a person joining the workforce to learn the nuances of a new employer, because while all employers will have the requisite skills and, probably, tradecraft, each one will have unique aspects. Treating employees well should be regarded as a bonus because it makes them better employees, so in terms of reputation and legacy that is the right thing to do. The Bill has tangible benefits for the employer as well as the employee.
Informal carers are forgotten about in parts of our legislation. They are currently not entitled to any dedicated statutory leave, and have to rely on other forms of leave. A tenth of all adults in the UK provide unpaid care for a friend or family member. I do not think that any Member, on either side of the House, wants unpaid carers to feel forgotten about, and I hope that the flexibility that the Bill allows will demonstrate, in a very small way, our gratitude for the selfless work that they do.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on the fantastic job she has done in leading this important Bill through all its stages, and on another excellent speech which summed up the concerns about this important issue. I also welcome the contributions from the hon. Members for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for Bracknell (James Sunderland), for Blackpool South (Scott Benton), for Guildford (Angela Richardson), for North West Norfolk (James Wild), for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) and for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), all of whom made persuasive cases for the Bill. I am certain that all Members want it to complete its passage today.
As I said on Second Reading, about 5 million people currently care for their loved ones without pay, while at the same time holding down employment. These unpaid carers—these everyday heroes who help to ensure that those who can be cared for at home, surrounded by friends and family in a familiar environment, are indeed cared for at home—have no statutory right to take leave from their caring responsibilities, even when they are also easing the burden on our already overstretched and overworked NHS in the process.
The Bill has our full support today, but it has had a long journey, given that the Government first promised the right to statutory carer’s leave nearly six years ago, and then again just over three years ago. As with many of the measures in this Session’s private Members’ Bills, the Government should have introduced this important statutory right in an employment Bill, but I am nevertheless glad that we are finally in a position to make progress with guaranteeing it. However, as I have pointed out in debates on the Bill’s earlier stages, the statutory requirement for unpaid carer’s leave is not enough. Although it gives them the right to take leave for caring responsibilities, it does nothing to support those thousands of unpaid carers through the financial challenges they face, even when organisations such as Carers UK say that it would increase productivity for employers and economic gains for the Treasury by improving retention rates, and although it would support working women, the group who are overwhelmingly the most likely to be juggling work and unpaid caring responsibilities.
That is why, although we have supported the Bill throughout its stages, the next Labour Government will be committed to building on this legislation and introducing a right to paid carer’s leave in our new deal for working people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)
It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate, and I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for her tremendous work in bringing forward this important legislation, which I am pleased to say the Government support. I am also very grateful for the cross-party support for these measures. It was a pleasure to attend the hon. Lady’s carer’s leave drop-in event on 25 January, and I was pleased that there is support from TSB and Centrica, and to see at first hand the good work led by Baroness Pitkeathley and Carers UK.
The Bill recognises the importance of the 4.2 million unpaid carers up and down the country, 2 million of whom are in work. It will provide employed unpaid carers with a new right to one week of unpaid leave per year to care for a dependant. Importantly, this will be a day-one right, available from the very first day of the job. From older employees to women and those with disabilities or long-term health conditions, where they are providing or in need of care, the Bill represents an important step forward in supporting their needs and giving them a better chance of remaining in work.
Some fine points were raised in the debate. The hon. Member for North East Fife made the interesting point that many carers do not even know they are carers. That point was also raised in a side conversation I had with the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), who told me that for 25 years her mother was a carer to her father. She talked about some of the situations they faced, such as when she needed to attend a doctor’s appointment with her parents to make sure that the needs of her father were understood. I know that the Bill is very important to her. The hon. Member for North East Fife also set out the broad range of such situations, including just going out to do some shopping.
The hon. Member for North East Fife also pointed out that this change in legislation reflects the change in our workplaces, and that it can improve trust between workers and employers, which is also very important. She rightly pointed out that lots of employers are already doing these things, and that the Bill merely formalises it for those who are while raising the bar for those who are not, because such steps serve to improve motivation, loyalty and productivity in the workplace.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) quoted one of my favourite songs—it is probably best if I do not burst into song on this occasion, on the basis of the interesting lyrics. He rightly pointed out this is a day-one right and that it meets the needs of both employers and workers. Some 575,000 people of working age have left the workplace; we need them back and flexibility is key. He also pointed out the cost to business, which is £39.9 million every year.
I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who had actually read the impact assessment, quite rightly—not everybody participating in such debates does. The impact assessment always sets out the financial impact on businesses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) talked about the notice period, and he asked about very short notice situations. I can reassure him that there is an existing right to do that in law for emergency situations, but as for the notice period—also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton)—a decent notice period is required which is twice the length of time expected to be taken plus one day, so a minimum of three days. It is fair on employers that they be given at least some notice, and there is a maximum likely allowance of seven days per year.
In response to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), let me reiterate what I said in the previous debate: this Government are committed to improving workers’ rights by any mechanism we can use. We are bringing forward this legislation and doing so much more quickly than by using the other ways he described.
My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) paid a handsome tribute to unpaid carers up and down the country. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) also paid tribute to those who have campaigned for this leave over the years—that campaigning has been absolutely critical, and today must be a very good day for them. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) gave some really touching examples, including that of Mrs Graham, who has had to care for her husband who has Parkinson’s. It must have been very difficult for her to do so for such an extended period of time.
To conclude, carer’s leave is important in improving carers’ quality of life, but it will also benefit those who depend on the care provided by unpaid carers and, indeed, employers. We know that there are already some brilliant, supportive and flexible employers out there who are taking great steps to support those in their workforce with caring responsibilities, recognising the value of policies that help carers to stay in work. The Government are supporting the Bill, in line with our manifesto commitments, and I will end by thanking our wonderful civil servants who have worked so hard on this legislation: Tony Mulcahy, Leona Hoxha-Kartallozi, Amanda Marsh, Ana Pollard, Sarah West, Bryan Halka, Elena Hartley, Roxana Bakharia, Jayne McCann and, from my private office, Cora Sweet. I commend the Bill to the House.
Wendy Chamberlain
With the leave of the House, I want to thank everybody who has taken the time to be here today and to speak. It is worth mentioning that, as a Liberal Democrat, I follow in the path of others in my passion for carers and their rights: the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) is currently doing on kinship care is very important, and our leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), has spoken many times in the House about his own caring experiences and has worked hard with organisations such as Carers UK to forward carers’ rights.
It has been a real pleasure working in partnership with Carers UK, which I thank for its amazing support on the Bill; it has made things very straightforward. I also want to mention the Carers Trust and the Scottish Government’s Carer Positive scheme—I have become an employer who supports carers myself, and I think that scheme should be looked at beyond Scotland. I also thank the carers working in North East Fife. They introduced me to the CRAP carers—the compassionate, resilient and patient group in St Andrews. I also thank the MS Society: I am grateful that it gave me sighting of its preliminary findings, which I mentioned in my Third Reading speech, and I hope the Government will take note of those findings when they are published later this year. I also want to acknowledge my senior researcher, Kathryn Sturgeon, who had her work on the Bill recognised by winning the project lead award in the inaugural cross-party staff network awards earlier this year.
I thank the staff in BEIS. We have seen one another regularly, and they have been a fantastic support; I know they did a great amount of work in the background on the Bill before it was introduced, consulting with stakeholders and formulating this policy area. As the Minister mentioned, he is not the only Minister I have been speaking with in relation to the Bill; I also recognise the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt)—who spoke on Second Reading—and the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell). Both this Minister, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), and the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), came to my drop-in event last week, and I have photographic evidence of their support for the Bill as it goes on to its remaining stages.
I am so grateful to all Members who spoke today. There are too many to mention, but I hope that both the Minister’s responses and what I have said in my speech have described the balance that we are attempting to strike by making carer’s leave a day-one right. I really hope that people can bring their whole selves to work—the skills, knowledge and behaviours that they have as carers—in order to be able to work hard for their employers, and I hope the Bill mitigates some of the concerns about people potentially abusing the system. I do need to mention the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), who said very kind words about me—I myself did not serve, but I worked for the Career Transition Partnership. He and I believe that the vast majority of veterans make a very positive contribution to the workplace, but hopefully the Bill will help provide support for those who need it.
The Bill is a huge step in the right direction for carers across the UK who volunteer to help loved ones with their caring needs. There is clearly much still to do in that regard, but I am very grateful to hon. Members for their support, and I look forward to watching the Bill’s progress in the other place.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Carer’s Leave Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Carer's Leave Act 2023 Read Hansard Text
Carer’s Leave Bill
Friday 3rd March 2023
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Carer's Leave Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the Long Title of the Bill is:
“A Bill to make provision about unpaid leave for employees with caring responsibilities”,
and that is what it will do. The Bill will give new rights to at least 2 million employees who have unpaid caring responsibilities, supporting them to remain in work and improving their health and well-being. It will also support employers’ retention and recruitment and increase their productivity. I must confess to a level of trepidation in making this speech which I did not expect to have. I spend most of my waking hours looking at legislation for what will not work and thinking of ways to explain to Ministers why things should not happen. It is a very unusual position I find myself in to be promoting the benefits and importance of a piece of legislation, so I beg your Lordships’ indulgence as I make this attempt.
I speak as the party’s business department lead, and I must confess to feeling something of a carpetbagger in supporting the Bill. The real credit for getting to this point lies on other shoulders, and it is on those shoulders that I now clamber. In particular, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and my noble friend Lady Tyler. I look forward to hearing from them later, as I do from all other noble Lords who will speak. The role of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, in bringing the issues facing carers to the fore has been exceptional and extends back decades—I did ask her, and I established that “decades” is the right word. Her counsel on the Bill has been invaluable, as has the counsel of my noble friend Lady Tyler. I am sure she will mention her Private Member’s Bill, which presages this one. The other shoulders on which I clamber belong to my honourable friend in the other place Wendy Chamberlain MP, who is standing at the Bar. It was thanks to Wendy that the Bill successfully passed all stages in the House of Commons on 3 February this year with no amendments, receiving support from the Government and MPs across the House. I am looking forward with anticipation to hearing the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Johnson—and anticipate his support. I thank his department for its help in preparing for this debate.
As I have said, the Bill has received strong support from all quarters: 85 MPs have explicitly stated public support for it and it has been endorsed by over 140 organisations, including small and large employers, trade unions, employer representative groups, local and national carer organisations and the APPG on Carers. Indeed, I was very pleased to meet a number of exemplar employers, both large and small, earlier this week to hear about their experiences of already providing carer’s leave and the positive impact that it is having on both their workforce and their business. They explained and brought home in human terms, and indeed business terms, how this leave is beneficial.
I also heard from two carers, both of whom are here with us today, who told me how invaluable it was to be able to take carer’s leave to better juggle work and care. I thank them for taking some time off and coming to your Lordships’ House. Again, they reinforced the human side of what we are discussing today. It really does matter—and it matters to an awful lot of people. Carers UK, which helped to facilitate many of these meetings, has been leading on this issue for years. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has been very much a part of that. Its research has uncovered that at least 2 million people—probably millions more—in paid employment are unpaid carers, so this is a significant issue.
The stresses and strains of having to juggle paid employment with unpaid care has led to hundreds of thousands of carers leaving the labour market or reducing their hours in work. This is at a time when recruitment into all forms of business is almost at a crisis level. More than 500,000 people—half a million—left the workforce between 2018 and 2020 because of the lack of support, 600 people per day on average. The acute shortage of social care support is also placing additional unsustainable pressure on carers and making it harder for them to manage both work and care. Caring has intensified too, with the proportion of unpaid carers providing significant care—over 20 hours per week—increasing by 42% since 2020, so they are having to do more caring, often as a result of less other care being available to their families. Many carers now report—it is no wonder—that they are exhausted and burned out, especially those who find the process of juggling so difficult. The Bill will help to meet some of that huge caring challenge. Again, it does not pretend to sweep all the issues away, but it is an important step.
I will summarise the main elements of the Bill. It will provide powers to make regulations to create an entitlement to carer’s leave. It does this by inserting new provisions into the Employment Rights Act 1996. The leave will be unpaid and will be for the purpose of caring for a dependant with a long-term care need. All employees who meet the qualifying criteria will be entitled to the leave, no matter how long they have worked for their employer. It will be available to take in blocks from as small as half a day to up to a week in total at least—depending on future legislation—over a 12-month period.
I now go to the qualifying criteria. First, the person must be providing care for, or arranging for the care of, a dependant with a long-term care need. The definition of “dependant” is broadly drawn, and we should be very pleased about that, because it will make things a lot easier to manage and administer. The Minister talked about simplicity, and the breadth of drawing creates simplicity in the delivery. The Bill states that
“a person is a dependant of an employee if they … reasonably rely on the employee to provide or arrange care”—
“reasonably rely” is an important phrase in this Bill. This is a helpful safety net and ensures that a wide range of relationships are in scope, wider than just immediate family members.
Secondly, the definition of long-term care need is similarly broad. In the Bill,
“a dependant of an employee has a ‘long-term care need’ if—
(i) they have an illness or injury (whether physical or mental) that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months,
(ii) they have a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, or
(iii) they require care for a reason connected with their old age.”
The Bill also requires that regulations set out the employee’s rights regarding their existing terms and conditions while on leave and have their right to return to work once they have finished their leave. The reference to terms and conditions does not, of course, include pay. As I have said, this is an unpaid leave right.
I believe it is important that the right to carer’s leave should work for both employees and employers. This is why employees will be required to give reasonable notice to take their leave, which enables employers to make necessary arrangements to manage their absence. In fact, in many cases, carers are having to use short-term sick leave or phone in sick to meet the care responsibilities they have. This is far less easy for an employer to manage than having advance knowledge that something is happening, where they can know the day and the hour, so it is actually a big advantage for employers.
The detail of notice requirements will be a matter for regulations, but the Government’s consultation response makes it clear that the notice period requirements may be similar to those for taking annual leave, which should keep the landscape simple for those requesting and responding to requests for this leave. I should remind your Lordships that there is a separate cover for emergency issues, which does not come within the Bill.
Employees have a right to carer’s leave, so it is stronger than a right to request, but the Bill acknowledges that there might be situations where it will be challenging for the employer to grant the leave requested. Therefore, an employer will be entitled to postpone the leave, but they may not deny a request. Clearly, this will be about the relationship between the employee and the employer, but the employee has a right. The aim of this approach is to ensure that employers engage with their employees so that they can agree on a suitable date. As with other employment rights, an employee will be able to make a complaint to an employment tribunal where their employer has unreasonably postponed or prevented them from taking carer’s leave.
I shall say just a few words about the general and delegated powers, because details of how the provision will work will be set out in secondary legislation. There are delegated powers in this Bill, and noble Lords, including me, have often been concerned, rightly, about the way in which delegated powers will be used. In this instance, the delegated powers will allow the Secretary of State to set out the extent of the leave entitlement and when it will be taken, and employee entitlements while on leave and on return to work. They will also allow for regulations to cover procedural requirements around notice periods and postponement, and the consequences of failing to follow requirements.
This is all wholly consistent with the approach taken to family leave rights generally. That consistency makes it clearer and easier for employees, employers and the legal community, and is a sensible and pragmatic approach. I was delighted that the DPRRC yesterday expressed no concerns with the secondary legislation in the Bill.
In conclusion, I encourage noble Lords to engage with the Bill. I think we all want it to succeed and to pass through your Lordships’ House as quickly and easily as possible. We have an opportunity here to make a real difference to the lives of those who will seek to rely on this entitlement in future, and the people for whom they care. I hope that with the support of noble Lords, we can take that opportunity and deliver legislation that can make a change for the better. I beg to move.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I might be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on his choice of subject and the excellent speech he made in support of it, to which I will add a brief footnote to demonstrate the support from my side of the House for his Bill, but also to focus on its application to young carers. Having spent much of the week listening to the noble Lord making critical comments about pieces of legislation, it was a refreshing change to hear him speak so positively about this one, and I congratulate him on getting a clear round from the Delegated Powers Committee.
Last month, the ONS published the second phase of data relating to unpaid care from the 2021 census, and the Carers Trust, to which I am grateful for its briefing, has produced an interesting note on what those census figures mean in relation to young carers and young adult carers. The headline was that the 2021 census figures showed a significant decrease in the number of young carers and young adult carers identified through the census, compared with 2011. I happen to believe that there are a number of reasons why those figures underrepresent the number of young carers, but there was a significant increase in the proportion of children and young adults providing significant levels of care, with over 140,000 young carers and young adult carers caring for more than 20 hours a week. Astonishingly, there are still close to 50,000 children and young adults providing more than 50 hours of care a week—the equivalent of a full-time job—which in many cases they have to reconcile with their commitments to education. The data also highlighted how young carers and young adult carers in England and Wales were more likely to be living in areas of high deprivation compared with their peers without caring responsibilities, and there is a message there for the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
While many of these young carers are still at school or college, a significant number are working and they struggle to balance caring with paid work. In the latest survey by the Carers Trust, 45% of young carers and young adult carers said that they were “always” or “usually” struggling to balance caring with paid work. Fewer than half of young carers and young adult carers said that they either “always” or “usually” get help from work to balance caring in their life.
By providing unpaid carers with a legal right to request additional leave because of their caring responsibilities, the noble Lord’s Bill will help reduce the need for carers to use annual leave or to give up work entirely because of their caring responsibilities, such as medical appointments or recovery from procedures.
One of the additional benefits of the noble Lord’s Bill is that it should lead to increased awareness about the needs of unpaid carers and should ensure that all employers have processes to identify unpaid carers from the point of application and also record which staff have caring responsibilities. It also has the potential to normalise conversations in the workplace about caring. This is something which will particularly benefit young adult carers, who say that they find it difficult to identify themselves as unpaid carers to their employers. I am interested in the final section of Part 1 of the noble Lord’s Bill, which provides a bit of a stick in that employers could be liable to pay compensation if they ignore the obligations in the Bill.
Finally, I support the Bill. I look forward to other speeches, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, who has been campaigning on this issue for as long as I have known her, which I suspect is even longer than the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has. I support this legislation.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young, and I thank him and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for their very kind words. It has always been a privilege to be working for carers and I have always been fired up by being in contact with carers and being inspired by their contribution and their need. It is a pleasure that John and Patrick, two carers, are with us below Bar today.
Your Lordships will know that the Bill in front of us represents an issue that is close to my heart and that when it comes to Private Members’ Bills I have previous form. It goes right back to 1995, when my much-respected colleague, the late Malcolm Wicks, took the first Private Member’s Bill for carers through the House of Commons. I was not in your Lordships’ House then, but I was chief executive of Carers UK and doing what Carers UK continues to do: providing support and leading the campaigning to get better recognition for carers, as it has been doing for more than 50 years in one guise or another.
That first Bill, the Carers (Recognition and Services) Bill, was not all that we wanted it to be, but it was a vital milestone in the fight—and I use the word “fight” advisedly—for recognition of carers. We learned in that particular fight a very important lesson: it is better to get something on the statute book and use it subsequently to move on rather than risk the ideal being the enemy of the good.
That lesson was further learned in two more Private Members’ Bills, by which time I was a Member of your Lordships’ House and had the honour of seeing them through this House. It is a lesson I have firmly in my mind today as we contemplate this Bill, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Its provisions are modest—some might say modest in the extreme—but they are of great significance.
Many of us have campaigned for many years to secure additional rights to better support people who are juggling paid work alongside their unpaid caring responsibilities. Indeed, I remember very well the Caring Costs campaign that Carers UK set up nearly 30 years ago. Interestingly, it was funded by a government grant—we must bear that in mind, perhaps. It was a ground-breaking piece of work which looked at unpaid carers’ experiences of being out of work and what would make a difference to them being able to return to work. That report from 1996 recommended a week’s, even two weeks’, unpaid leave for carers to be able to combine work and care, so this Bill has been a long time coming.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, will no doubt tell the House, she has tried previously on several occasions to bring forward legislation—unsuccessfully. I am therefore very pleased that this Bill, brought forward by Wendy Chamberlain MP last year, following the absence of an employment Bill, has made it this far.
As we have heard already, millions of people provide unpaid care to family members and friends in communities across the United Kingdom. While many do so gladly, willingly and with love, it often comes at great personal cost because carers do not receive the support and recognition they need.
A key benefit of the Bill will be to raise the profile of unpaid carers further by helping employers and other employees better understand what caring is. It is too often seen as a private matter and, as we have heard, carers are reluctant to identify themselves. The word “carer” is still not well understood and is often muddled up with “care worker”—although nowadays, thankfully, your computer is a little less likely to change it to “career”, as it always used to do.
While carers face many challenges, one area that can be particularly difficult is continuing to remain in paid employment while providing unpaid care. All too often, the assumption is made that you simply cannot do this—it has to be one or the other. I have lost count of the number of carers who have said to me, “It was a no-brainer. When my mother was going to be discharged from hospital, they automatically assumed that I was going to give up my job to care for her.”
The latest Family Resources Survey finds, as we have heard, that 2 million people undertake paid employment alongside their caring responsibilities. Research from Carers UK indicates that these numbers could be far higher, because of carers’ reluctance to identify themselves. So it is only right that we take steps to support carers to remain in work where they want to do so.
The stresses and strains of having to combine work and care have led to hundreds of thousands of carers having to leave the labour market or reduce their hours of work, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Having to leave work has a significant impact on carers’ finances, of course. Carers UK found that two in five carers who have given up work or reduced their working hours to care were around £10,000 to £20,000 per year worse off as a direct result. It also has a negative impact on carers’ pensions; more than half of unpaid carers are unable to save anything for retirement. This has huge implications for carers and the economy in the long term, with many left penniless in later life with the resulting effects and stress on the benefits system.
Beyond income, staying in paid work has a significant emotional effect on carers who can manage to do it. We know that mental well-being is higher among working carers in organisations that provide support than among those that provide no support. As one carer said, “I currently work two days a week and find hospital appointments clashing with workdays very stressful. I feel guilty about asking to swap days or take time off and guilty about not being able to attend appointments. A policy that allowed me unpaid leave would be good. I don’t think my employer is aware or understands what caring is like.” That is the case with many employers, although we must also pay tribute to the many employers that have taken up the carers’ cause and aim to provide support in their places of work.
However, while the Bill has significant benefits to carers themselves—supporting them to remain in work and improving their health and well-being—there are sound economic reasons for ensuring that carers are able to remain in work. The UK economy and the productivity of business and employers, including the public and voluntary sectors, depend on retaining their skilled and knowledgeable staff. Crucially, that increasingly includes employees who are trying to combine work with unpaid caring responsibilities. We know how many skills carers develop during their caring lives—not just the obvious caring skills but organisational and administrative skills, which can be of great value to employers.
Certain sectors of our economy are particularly reliant on employees who combine working and caring. For instance, the latest NHS England staff survey found that one in three NHS staff also provides unpaid care. It is vital that they are supported to remain in work, especially considering the current health and care workforce shortages, of which we are all only too well aware.
The Bill’s provisions will also have a positive effect on employers. Evidence shows that providing carer’s leave leads to increased productivity for employers by improving their staff retention rates, reducing their recruitment costs—we all know how much it costs to recruit a new member of staff—and supporting the health and well-being of their workforce, leading to far less absenteeism. The Bill will also bring economic gains for the Treasury through increased productivity, as more carers will be able to stay in work rather than having to reduce their hours or leave the labour market altogether, and thus pay more tax to HMRC.
It is clear to me that all parties will benefit from this legislation; it is a win-win situation. The Bill is well drafted and allows for the flexibility that is necessary for it to work in practice for both employees and employers. It is particularly welcome that the Bill will enable employees to take carer’s leave to care for a very wide range of people: a spouse or civil partner, a child, a parent, a person who lives in the same household or a person who may not be living in the same household but who still relies on you to provide care, and of course the definition of “dependant”, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, is widely defined, and that is very welcome too.
The Bill also allows employees to take carer’s leave for a wide range of reasons, such as providing personal or practical support, helping with official or financial matters including phoning and being on the internet, providing personal and medical care, or making care arrangements. Anyone who has ever tried to make such arrangements knows just how time consuming that is: making contacts, being passed from one to another and inevitably waiting for the call backs which do not come.
While we still need to go further in providing support for carers to help them to continue work and care, I see this Bill as a vital first step and as a commitment that in future we can ensure them even more rights in their workplaces, and I will look forward to participating in that legislation in the future.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. Her knowledge and expertise on this subject are unequalled in this Chamber. As she said, the Bill has been a long time coming and it is a vital first stage—and it is indeed that. I thank my noble friend Lord Fox for his detailed explanation of the Bill and congratulate my colleague in the other place, Wendy Chamberlain MP, for piloting the Bill to this stage. I am very pleased to support this Bill at Second Reading and I hope your Lordships will be pleased to support it and take it through to its next stage.
In an ideal world, I would prefer to see carer’s leave as a paid right. Indeed, many employers would subscribe to that, and many do it already. It is a good employment practice, the cost is minor and the employer will be more likely to keep valuable staff at a time when recruitment is getting harder.
The Bill has identified a clear gap in current legislation, in that it is not about emergency help or care for children who are ill, which are already legislated for, but it is about long-term, day-to-day caring needs for dependants and those close to the carer. As our population ages, this will become increasingly important. Crucially, the administration of the scheme is reduced to the minimum. Simplification matters because it means that those benefiting from it can follow the necessary procedures easily.
A key issue will be publicity. I was very struck by the comment of the sponsor in the House of Commons, Wendy Chamberlain MP, that
“a significant issue is simply getting carers to recognise themselves as such”.—[Official Report, Commons, Carer’s Leave Bill Committee, 9/11/22; col. 5.]
The more the Government can do to promote the new right to carer’s leave, the better the outcomes will be.
More and more people are going to need extra personal support as they grow older. Family members will mostly be providing it. We need to encourage those helping provide care to do so without giving up work, because the cost of care to a family would otherwise exceed the level of their income. We need them to stay in employment.
Seven million people are providing unpaid care when in paid work. That is a very large number. The economy needs them to stay in paid work, so this Bill really does matter. I welcome the Bill having completed its passage through the House of Commons without amendment. I hope that it will do likewise in this House and that the regulations are passed as soon as possible.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I am pleased to speak in wholehearted support of this Bill. It has been a pleasure to hear other speeches and to receive briefings on this significant area of our common life. I look forward to hearing other speeches and thank those who have introduced the Bill.
The Bill is an important step forward in showing carers that although their efforts may not be waged, they are very much valued. It might not go as far as could be hoped, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has said, in that it provides for unpaid rather than paid leave, but it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
I see three key features of this Bill: first, the provision of leave for anyone with caring responsibilities, not just those who care for people in their household; secondly, guaranteeing this leave as a day one right; and thirdly, allowing for it to be taken flexibly. These three features show that the Bill recognises the variety of unpaid carers on whom society depends and the distinct challenges they face.
I draw your Lordships’ attention to the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care. The report, Care and Support Reimagined: A National Care Covenant for England, was published just a few weeks ago. Paid leave for carers and the right to request flexibility from day one of hire were among the commission’s recommendations. That report, like the authors and champions of this Bill, recognises the difficulties of juggling responsibilities to one’s employers and to the people one cares for. When that balancing act becomes unsustainable, millions of people give up work or reduce their hours in order to care for loved ones. If they do so, further financial pressure is added to their load. In return for providing care worth some £132 billion a year, more than a million unpaid carers are living in poverty.
There are psychological and spiritual as well as financial benefits to being able to stay in work. As one of my colleagues, Carolyn, who cares for her son, told me, for many carers including herself, being able to remain in work forms a vital part of their own well-being and positive mental health. Being able to contribute beyond their caring responsibilities is all part of feeling that their lives have purpose, meaning and consequence. This was echoed at a recent gathering of carers, parents and grandparents of children with special educational needs and disabilities which my wife and I hosted at our house. Many spoke of the loneliness of being a carer and the need for wider support networks, which can of course include colleagues at work.
Having the right to a week’s leave will therefore help many unpaid carers to continue working, with the support for their well-being and household finances which that entails. However, it is important to state that we all stand to benefit from their skills, talents and experience remaining in the workforce. The phenomenal costs of recruitment and retention, which have already been mentioned, point to the spiritual truth that no one is a fungible economic unit. I and my diocese would be much poorer without people such as Carolyn—without their compassion, empathy, sensitivity and wisdom. She enriches us not despite her caring experience, but because of it. This Bill should therefore be passed not as an act of pity, but as a recognition of our collective debt and gratitude to one another and our interdependence on one another.
Returning briefly to the Archbishops’ Commission, its report sees paid leave for carers as just one part of a more radical and ambitious vision. The Christian belief is that we are all made in the image of God, that it is not good for any of us to be alone, and that giving and receiving care is fundamental to human flourishing. This wider values-based vision of the commission encourages a revolution in our attitudes to disability and ageing, recognising that every single person is of equal value and dignity and must be treated as such. This vision includes the aim to make social care a universal entitlement, and that this should be person-centred care, designed with people, not imposed on them. At its heart is a call for a national care covenant which sets out the distinct roles and responsibilities not just of government but of all of us as citizens and neighbours.
I commend the archbishops’ report to your Lordships, as it outlines both the fundamental values and the specific steps which could bring a compassionate, inclusive and sustainable care system into being. I invite employers to venture beyond the letter of the Bill and enter into its spirit by giving carers active support, recognition and affirmation, as well as respite. For every workplace would profit immeasurably by learning from those who give themselves fully to the well-being of others.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, at the outset I take this opportunity to acknowledge the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, who led the earlier debate so magnificently. The ambitions of her Bill were the fundamental objectives of many campaigns, and of a project a number of women set up in Tower Hamlets called the maternity services liaison advocacy scheme. It is a joy to see that the noble Baroness was speaking, and I am sorry I missed the debate. It is also an honour and a personal privilege to be taking part in this debate, and I want to humbly thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his thorough introduction; he need not have worried at all.
Many statistics on unpaid carers are constantly bandied about, but the facts are glaring; indeed, we know that many more carers are not in the public eye or paid for by the public purse. Like many hundreds of thousands of families, we have cared for our loving and beautiful 44 year-old son—a young man who inspires us every day—without a shred of the public care system support which may or may not have been in place. Very early on in our professional and business careers, the decision had to be made that, as parents, one of us would need to stay at home to ensure that our son was safe and cared for.
I can tell your Lordships that even enlightened local authorities were less than pleasant when women, in particular, sought time off for caring responsibilities, which in many instances counted against their career progression. Not much appears to have changed for substantial numbers of carers on zero-hours contracts or for poorly paid part-time workers who are almost certainly unlikely to gain from the proposed Bill. However, I keep hoping that one of these days, our Government’s compassionate and caring conservatism, levelling up and all the other “ism” ambitions will eventually eradicate these horrible, cruel, medieval working conditions in the world’s sixth largest economy. As a society, if we can afford to spend billions on crap PPE and weapons of war, we can also empower with a decent and just wage the army of social carers and family carers who are upholding our nation.
For those in our social welfare system, £69 for 24/7 carer’s allowance, which has increased by only £15 over the last decade, is an insult. I can understand why many families such as ours simply opt out of the system. Many families may not even be aware of these cumbersome systems, or able to navigate them for this miserly amount. It is therefore important that changes are relayed through the NHS and DWP systems to ensure that these entitlements are known to carers.
I welcome these proposals for the carer’s leave entitlement. With hand on heart, I say that they are a long time coming. More than four decades ago, as one of the founders and the manager of a project, I ensured that all members of our all-women staff team had written into their contract their entitlement to childcare and other care responsibilities, including emergency provisions, as the Bill aspires to do. This decision was critical to keep and foster talented and skilled women staff members, many of whom would otherwise have left and given up their employment. Many are still forced to choose, even today, as powerfully advocated by noble Lords during the Second Reading of the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill. I believe that our practice was pioneering in the 1980s and had a transformative impact on local services and statutory and voluntary organisations. Local and national leadership are critical. I believe that most employers will be supportive, given the available statistics: almost every household will face these dilemmas in their home sooner or later.
We are all too familiar with “A week is a long time in politics”. Well, let me say that providing care and support for vulnerable loved ones with special physical or emotional needs is a lifetime of devotion. We must do all we can to prevent it becoming an untold toil. The flexibility and wide-ranging application proposed by the Bill are therefore welcome.
I have a generic point. Regardless of whether there are 10 million or 1 million carers, it would be more comforting if the Government recognised—they must—that family support systems are holding up an otherwise totally broken system of social care. From all the facts, well rehearsed in this Chamber, we see that we are not valuing carers and their real worth enough, in any way. Every family such as ours is still holding up, not only when the formal care systems are broken, to make sure that our vulnerable loved ones live with dignity and independence.
It appears to have become customary to heroise individuals or families as a way of illustrating the impact of our policies and legislation on some service users. The question for me is not about one individual experience or my personal experience, which is painful and lifelong enough. As legislators, we are responsible for making a difference to many more families, communities and those in wider society who so often cannot access benefits or services. Therefore, gender and other equality impact assessments of the Bill are absolutely a must to realise the aspiration behind the deliberation in this Chamber. It has far-reaching implications that can change people’s lives.
I am thankful to the many children’s and other carers’ organisations that have written to me, and I am always beholden to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley who has campaigned for social and economic justice for carers for so long and so relentlessly. I salute her constantly, and very often in this Chamber.
I ask the Minister to write to me with details of how government departments reach out to communities hitherto beyond the reach of many respected national organisations, particularly communities in inner cities and deprived areas. How do government departments relay information on rights to families at the coalface of social and financial isolation? Consistency in our policies should be joined up, and not undermine access to information. For example, government departments are now routinely cutting or shutting down phone lines, instead directing service users to online services on the assumption that everyone has access to a smartphone or a computer. It is not so, and we know the facts about digital exclusion. We also know, and heard throughout the pandemic, of the impact of digital exclusion on the most vulnerable and needy. When they cannot afford food or energy bills, the upkeep of broadband or a computer device is pretty much out of the reach of most of them. We must therefore take the utmost care to undertake an impact analysis of all the legislative and procedural frameworks on carers and other vulnerable groups who suffer disproportionately.
As a community campaigner, I say that there is so much more to discuss, including the cutbacks and desperate shortage in social care, and the lack of respite and adequate day care facilities or holiday provision, all of which are putting huge extra pressures—I will not use the word “burden”—on families already stretched beyond their capacity. We speak of civilised society, and surely the heroic and unrelenting support that carers in their millions provide speaks volumes about our civility and honour. We are already saving the Government hundreds of billions, and none of us should rest here until there is full recognition and parity of employment rights for carers. So with great joy I support these good, small steps.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, we have had a very good debate on this important Private Member’s Bill, and I thank my noble friend Lord Fox for his excellent introduction. For me, the debate has underlined once again why carers’ lives can be so difficult, despite caring usually being undertaken out of love and deep familial bonds. As we have heard, caring unpaid for a family member, friend or neighbour is a reality for many millions of people across the UK and is something that almost everyone will experience at some point in their life. It can take many forms: it can be day-to-day physical caring, washing, dressing, feeding those who cannot care for themselves; it can be making medical appointments, accompanying people, arranging for paid care; it can be helping a housebound elderly neighbour.
But caring for a loved one can come at high personal costs. Many carers find that their own relationships are negatively affected, and they can face their own health problems as a result of their caring role. With the huge pressures and backlogs across the NHS, with the difficulty all too often of getting appointments with a GP or a hospital, and the record level of demand for social care services at a time when the social care workforce is depleted, many carers are simply not getting the support that they need.
That is essentially what this Bill is designed to address, albeit that we are only at the start of what I hope is a much longer journey. “A vital first step” is how it has been described today. But today’s debate has amply demonstrated how carer’s leave will make a difference to carers’ lives. We have already heard the latest estimates showing that over 7 million people in this country are juggling work and unpaid care, and every year more than 1.9 million people in paid employment become unpaid carers. This is not a sideshow; this is something affecting large segments of the population. We have today heard very movingly the stresses and strains of having to juggle paid work alongside unpaid care, without the support that is so often needed, and how it has left many carers exhausted and burned out.
Unfortunately, as we have heard, these pressures have led to hundreds of thousands of people having to drop out of the labour market or reduce their hours—at a time when their skills are much needed to the wider economy. We know and have heard that having a supportive employer and the ability to take time off work can help mitigate those pressures. Indeed, two-thirds of working carers who have already had access to unpaid carer’s leave through their own employer’s enlightened employment practices have told Carers UK that it really made their caring role easier. I spoke recently to some carers who were juggling working and caring, and I was very struck by what one lady said to me. She said, “I no longer have to hide the fact that I am a carer.” I can well remember feeling that I needed to hide my own personal caring responsibilities when I was in a full-time job, and I would have loved to feel that what I was trying to do was both above board and legitimate. I hope that this legislation will normalise and legitimise those struggling to do both.
I was also very pleased recently, along with my noble friend Lord Fox, to meet some leading employers in this field, large and small, to hear at first hand about their experiences of already providing carer’s leave and the positive impacts that doing so had on their businesses, particularly in terms of staff retention. For this to really work, it must have real benefits to employers and employees. That is the beauty of this Bill, which, by creating a new entitlement for employees to take up to a week of unpaid leave a year, will really help. Yes, it is modest—we all understand that—but it will provide increased flexibility to unpaid carers who are balancing paid employment with their caring responsibilities. I hope above all that, for many more of them, it will mean not having to make that invidious choice between caring and working.
In addition, the Bill will support carers with their finances, particularly in the longer term, and help with pensions. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, reminded us of the number of carers who, because they have to give up their job altogether or reduce their working hours, become significantly worse off. This fall in income is often accompanied by a sharp increase in household costs as a result of the additional costs of ill health and disability. In the middle of a cost of living crisis, that is enough to tip many people over the edge.
Of course, everything comes with a cost, and we need to be up front about that. But I was struck last week when reading some research that suggested that UK companies can save up to £4.8 billion a year in unplanned absences and a further £3.4 billion in improved retention by adopting working practices to support employees with caring responsibilities. It might not be a strict comparison, but it is interesting to note that the impact assessment for the Bill says that the direct costs will be very small—only £4.7 million for one-off familiarisation costs for this new legislation, plus the recurring familiarisation costs. I call that quite a return.
I want to draw attention, as I have in the past, to the impact of unpaid caring on women and those caring for children with long-term disabilities. The Bill would particularly support women to stay in work, as they are more likely to be juggling work and care and more likely to be in part-time than full-time work. Carers UK research has shown that, while the average person has a 50:50 chance of caring by the age of 50, on average women can expect to take on caring responsibilities more than a decade earlier than men. Likewise, the Family Resources Survey shows that women aged 45 to 64 are most likely to be carers and more likely than men to provide informal care across all age groups, except for those aged 85 and over. It is welcome that the impact assessment produced for the Bill recognises:
“In the context of the gender pay gap, the fact that women are more likely to provide care means that they are more likely to face adverse employment effects associated with caring i.e., lower earnings and leaving the labour market.”
It is welcome that the Bill also provides much-needed support for those who are juggling work with caring for a child with a long-term disability. People in this situation often face extreme pressures and challenges, and it is right that they should be able to take advantage of the provisions in this Bill, building on the rights that they already have under unpaid parental leave.
Finally, it is instructive to see how other countries provide support to employees trying to juggle work and care. In preparing for this debate, I did a bit of research. The fact is that the UK currently lags behind other countries when it comes to workplace rights for carers. Many already have some form of carer’s leave in place—of course, it differs—including Japan, Canada, the USA, Germany, Ireland, France, Belgium and Sweden. So I think it is right that we are looking to close this gap. Indeed, there are some interesting and innovative approaches to family leave and carer’s leave adopted in other countries that we would do well to study—a point I know the Minister made in the previous debate.
To conclude, I am delighted that after many years of trying, we finally have an opportunity to ensure that carers are better supported to remain in work by providing them with additional rights at work to make their lives more flexible and manageable. It is a cause that I, like so many others in this Chamber, have long championed. I do not pretend to have anything like the pedigree of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, to whom we all owe a huge debt of gratitude. However, as she mentioned, I have tried several times—most recently in 2016—to introduce a carer’s leave entitlement Bill. Sadly, as is the way of these things, it never received a Second Reading. So one of my messages today is to never give up hope. An opportunity may well come along, sometimes when you least expect it. I give huge thanks to my honourable friend Wendy Chamberlain, and of course to Carers UK for everything it has done. I very much hope that this time we can get these vital employment rights for carers on to the statute book, which is why I am giving my noble friend’s Bill my full support.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for sponsoring the Bill before us today on this important matter, and indeed his colleague Wendy Chamberlain MP in the other place for initially sponsoring it. I note the cross-party support in the other place, as has been mentioned today, and I hope we can move forward in the same spirit. I also add my thanks for all the different briefing papers we have received—from Carers UK, for example, and the MS Society.
I particularly pick up on the reference the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester made to the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care. I, too, recommend it to those who have not had a chance to look at its recommendations. It was my great privilege to work closely with Anna Dixon in her former role at the Centre for Ageing Better when I was the leader of Leeds City Council. So many of the pieces of work we did there have informed my views on how we need to move forward on this issue.
I also pay tribute to the other speakers in the debate for their passion and obvious long-term commitment to this agenda and for standing up for the most deserving in our society—all those unsung heroes who do so much to support their loved ones. Indeed, as we have heard today, many noble Lords have personal, as well as professional, experience of these matters; I note the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin. These are incredibly important insights that we need to use to inform our discussions and policies as we take them forward. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley and thank her for her inspirational speech, and I acknowledge her wealth of experience in these matters.
We fully support the Bill, although we believe that carer’s leave should be paid. We have to ask why it has taken the Government so long to introduce legislation, therefore necessitating its introduction by Private Member’s Bill. We remain disappointed that the promised employment Bill has not materialised. However, we acknowledge that this is a significant moment to take a step in the right direction, and we believe we should seize the moment. It is also worth noting that, under the proposals set out in Labour’s New Deal for Working People, the next Labour Government will legislate to ensure that working people can respond to family emergencies as and when they arise, without being left out of pocket.
As so many have said, unpaid carers are among the many unrecognised stars of the health and care sector. They step in to support friends and family with care so that those people can retain some of their independence and dignity. We need to emphasise, particularly with International Women’s Day approaching next week, how important it is to point out that, tragically, the highest proportion of unpaid carers are women. The highest proportion fall in the 50 to 59 age group, where a staggering one in five women are estimated to be carers. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there are 350,000 more people over 50 who are economically inactive, with health cited as the largest single reason but caring and family responsibilities coming second.
Carers UK has stated that granting unpaid carers the right to carer’s leave would improve the finances of carers who would no longer have to reduce their working hours or give up work altogether. I think we all took on board the points outlined by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley about the impact on mental health and, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, the impact of loneliness.
The scale of the issue is huge. We have heard many figures today. Carers UK estimates that there are 7 million people in paid work who also provide unpaid care. Every year an estimated 1.9 million people in work become carers, and there is evidence of many using up their holiday entitlement to provide cover as needed. An estimated one in seven juggle work and care, with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation stating that over 1 million carers are living in poverty, feeling “abandoned by society”.
In the 2017 to 2019 parliamentary Session, the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee held an inquiry on employment support for carers. Its May 2018 report, Employment Support for Carers, stated:
“Balancing care with paid employment is a tricky juggling act”—
I think that is putting it mildly—which, as we have heard, causes many carers to either give up work or reduce their hours. It said that this was costly to the individual, who can lose financial security and may need to recruit a replacement. In addition, it found that there was an economic cost as
“productivity, and ultimately tax revenues, suffer from people who want to work, or work more, being avoidably unable to do so”.
Putting my business and trade hat on, I will say, like the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that the impact on the economy is profound and needs to be taken into account by the Government, particularly by the Treasury. I will not repeat the figures that the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, quoted, but they are stark and significant. Indeed, our Adult Social Care Committee estimated in its excellent report a loss to the Exchequer of £2.9 billion in carer’s benefits and lost tax revenues.
We welcome the broad definition of reasons for needing carer’s leave and the fact that the definition of “dependant” is also broadly drawn. These definitions are often misunderstood, and further clarity is indeed welcome.
I particularly welcome the reference to young carers made by the noble Lord, Lord Young. He raised the links to deprivation and that awful tendency of those in this category to suffer in silence and not to come forward and claim any support that might be available to them. Given the important role that unpaid carers play and the fact that so many of them find themselves in precarious financial positions, especially with the soaring cost of living crisis, the situation is simply unacceptable. Through this process, the ability to raise the profile of the issues is very important.
I feel that it is impossible to talk in this debate without referencing the urgent need to tackle the crisis of social care in this country—across all age groups, those caring for both children and adults with disabilities, respite need and home care, as well as in the residential sector. It would be very helpful in this debate to have an update on progress in this area.
I very much look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope that, in line with other contributors’ support today, we will hear that the Government support this important Bill’s passage so that we can start to move forward on the journey to give carers support and to continue to increase awareness for those who so desperately need, and richly deserve, our support.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Johnson of Lainston) (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for introducing this debate. It was a highly eloquent, extremely thoughtful, very technical and, frankly, quite moving introduction to what I think we all agree is a most essential Bill. I also thank Wendy Chamberlain for initiating this process in the other place and the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, who clearly has been an inspiration to many in this House. She is an inspiration to me and has helped drive this agenda for many years. I hope that the noble Baroness feels a sense of satisfaction as she sits here participating in this debate, where we can now as a group “do something about it”, as they say. I personally appreciate the enormous support the noble Baroness has given to this process.
I would like to cover three specific areas in terms of why the Government are so keen to support the Bill. First, this is good for business. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, covered this from her expertise in her trade and economy role. Many other noble Lords also focused on this important point. We cannot afford for so many individuals to leave the workforce if we can possibly avoid it. I will talk about the moral case for that in a moment, but purely commercially, it does not make sense. It is an economic disaster that people are forced to leave employment in order to care. The figure quoted, of £2.9 billion, seems to me to understate the cost to the economy of this situation. Coming at this from a relatively dry economic standpoint, as someone who is not a proponent, fundamentally, of excessive regulation or additional burdens on businesses, I believe this is absolutely the opposite. It is an essential lubrication to the opportunity for businesses to prosper and for more people to come back into the workforce. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, wisely said, it will allow us to raise the profile of carers. It will allow people to better understand the business case for being able to combine work and caring. It will also help businesses understand the importance of retaining their staff and engendering good relations with their employees. I am absolutely convinced, as are the Government, that the business case for this Bill is paramount and incontrovertible.
Secondly, the Bill reflects the relevant role that carers play in our society. I was appalled to hear of some of the costs that the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, mentioned, of between £10,000 and £20,000, the well-established losses to pension contributions, and the poverty levels in which many carers find themselves on account of having to give up work to do the right thing.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester raised a number of issues which have confluence with these points. I have not read the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care. I would be grateful if he would be kind enough to make a copy available to me, and I will certainly invest some time in it.
Other noble Lords raised the issue of the economic cost to carers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Blake and Lady Tyler. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, had to hide her caring responsibilities from her employer. My noble friend Lord Young asked whether employers are obliged to keep a register of carers in their companies. They will be obliged to record people who say they are carers—clearly the process to obtain the unpaid leave will necessitate that type of information—but they are not obliged to undertake a survey of their staff. I do not believe it is a requirement for registration when you join a firm. I think this initial stage is probably satisfactory, but it is certainly something that should be kept under review.
We hope this legislation will start to change the attitudes of businesses and individuals so that we can be proud to be carers, and businesses can be proud to have carers in their businesses and to support them in an appropriate way, as they would those in other occupations, such as the Territorial Army or whatever it may be, who have important work to do and whom they want to retain. This is a very relevant incentive—not that I am comparing those two roles, but I hope noble Lords understand what I am trying to imply.
The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, made important points that I would like to address relating to making sure that the profile and value of carers is appropriately raised. Their importance to society must not be understated. For me, this Government and, I am sure, all of us in this House, it is better that we have an effective voluntary care system for dependants from loved ones, friends, neighbours and relations as a principle in how we structure our society and community. We believe firmly in that, so any measures that enable this type of society—a society of people bound together through love—is more powerful than any state support that could be provided to an individual, so I emphasise to the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, my support for her remarks.
I am also very aware of the noble Baroness’s comments around signposting entitlements to carers. It is important that we have a variety of different signpost mechanisms. They are, on the whole, the traditional mechanisms of websites, through ACAS and the tribunal system and similar government information portals, but I am not unaware of the need to raise the profile of this principle. I hope that debates such as this and the work of noble Lords will ensure we can continue to do this.
I am also aware of the issue around minority information portals. The Government are very committed to ensuring that all language communities are fully covered, but if there is anything that I can do personally to magnify this situation to any specific community, I would be keen to hear. This is ongoing work. I am sure all input will be well received. I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, asked me to write to her with specific details. I will be delighted to do so, and that may instigate further debate.
I hope I have covered everyone’s specific points. I express my gratitude to all sides of the House for the moving and powerful way that we have come together to very clearly put all our support behind something that is very straightforward, easy to administer, essential for our economy, right for the moral fibre of our nation in terms of keeping carers in work, and will benefit society fundamentally in the long term as well as raising the profile of this issue so that we can be proud to be carers and workers.
I turn now to some of the specifics that it would be useful to have on record. The Bill will create a highly flexible new leave right with low administration requirements. It will be available from the first day of employment, so people will be able to take their one-week entitlement in blocks as small as half a day or, indeed, for the full week. Both “dependant” and “long-term care need” are defined in the Bill, as has been raised. This is important, and these definitions are very broad, as has been welcomed. This ensures that leave is available for the widest possible range of long-term caring scenarios.
The Bill also keeps the administration process as light as possible. It is our intention that the associated regulations will state that an employer cannot demand that an employee present documentation in support of a leave request. I think we all agree that that is a relevant point. It is not for people to justify their actions; that raises even higher hurdles and barriers around the situation we are discussing. This helps the employee, who may not wish to divulge details of the health and well-being of their relative or friend. It also helps the employer, frankly, as it will relieve them of the responsibility of storing and managing that data effectively.
In conclusion, the Government are pleased to support this Private Member’s Bill and deliver our manifesto commitment. I thank again the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for bringing the Bill before us today, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for her endeavour and her journey to where we stand now. I thank all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. Many have spoken passionately about their personal experience of caring for loved ones. I hope that in future, for many unpaid carers, this new leave right will make it that little bit easier to balance their work and caring commitments, and that their lives will be a little bit better for that. This is why I want to see the Bill succeed. We have an opportunity here today to make a real difference to the lives of those who seek to rely upon carer’s leave in the future.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I join the Minister in thanking noble Lords for their contributions today. When I saw the speakers’ list, I suspected that we would have a good debate, but it has exceeded those expectations. I think it has been a wonderful debate and I understand that even the Deputy Speaker refused to leave the Woolsack in order to be able to hear the end of it. I start by specifically thanking the Minister: the care and the detail with which he replied to the debate is a very good sign, and I am really delighted by that. I am afraid I will have to pull him up on one thing. He suggested that the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, might be satisfied: I can warn him, from what little I know of the noble Baroness, that she will be at his door tomorrow with the next requirement.
I would like to pick a few of the bones out of this debate, because it has brought together a wide variety of issues. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for bringing up the issue of young carers and young adult carers, because I failed to bring it forward, and I am delighted that he was able to do it. He also talked about workplaces being aware of how many carers they have. My noble friend Lord Shipley pointed out that there are an awful lot of hidden carers within the workforce. Even those businesses that have very well-defined carer systems, carer passports and whatever else do not unearth all the carers they have, so there is an awful lot of work to do, both at a governmental and societal level and at a granular level in businesses, particularly in small and medium businesses where they do not have the HR processes and the systems or the people to do this work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said a lot of interesting things, but I will pick out her point about trying to remove the guilt from this process—the guilt of the employee having to go and ask, cap in hand, for time to do a very important task for the person for whom they care. By putting that into a process, we start removing that guilt. My noble friend Lord Shipley mentioned the ageing population, and this is crucial. The demographic, as it goes forward, is going to drive the need for care, year on year, to an even higher level than we see today.
I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for his contribution. He talked about valuing carers, and so many carers in the current situation do not feel valued by people around them. He talked about dignity, and I think part of what we are trying to do is create an element of dignity. The right reverend Prelate also talked about interdependence, with so many, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said, feeling lonely. These are key issues. This was picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, who talked about her own personal experience, which was quite moving, as well as the wider issue about how this is a real challenge in the harder-to-reach communities in our society, and I thank her for her delivery. My noble friend Lady Tyler talked about not having to make the choice between caring and working, not having to walk out of your work because you cannot manage the process of day-to-day life.
I am now going to do what most Ministers seem to do, which is shuffle a few pieces of paper. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and everybody else for their support, but I did have some trepidation that one of your Lordships was going to come up, not necessarily with an excoriating review of what we had here but with a whole catalogue full of massive improvements. We all know there is more to be done, and I am sure, as I have just said, there will be lots of people wanting to suggest what that should be. But the sense I got from the Chamber is that there are not going to be lots of amendments coming forward, because the way we get this Bill through quickly, or indeed get it through at all, is without amendments—by accepting what we have and moving on. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, for her, I think, cry of: “Forwards. Let us seize the moment”. I ask your Lordships to join with us, with the Minister and me, to seize that moment, and I invite noble Lords to support a Second Reading of the Bill.
Carer’s Leave Bill
Wednesday 19th April 2023
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Carer’s Leave Bill
Friday 19th May 2023
(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this is a very worthy Bill and one that I am glad to see through to its final reading. We know that caring can take many guises, and providing unpaid care for a family member, friend, neighbour or dependant is a reality for many millions of people across the UK and is something that almost everyone will experience either directly or indirectly through their lives.
New findings from Carers UK and the University of Sheffield released earlier this month show that unpaid carers in England and Wales now contribute a staggering £445 million to the economy of England and Wales every day—that is £162 billion per year of voluntary work and the equivalent of a second NHS in England and Wales.
At an individual level, staying in work while providing care for a relative or friend can be incredibly challenging. Latest estimates show that over 7 million people in the UK are juggling work and unpaid care and, every year, more than 1.9 million people in paid employment become unpaid carers. The stresses and strains of having to juggle paid work alongside unpaid care without the support they need has left many exhausted and burnt out, and too often it is impossible for them to manage. As a result, on average, 600 people per day have had to leave work because they need to provide care. Many others have had to reduce their hours.
Research shows that having a supportive employer and the ability to take time off work to support dependants can mitigate those pressures. That is why this Bill would create a new entitlement for employees to take up to a week of unpaid leave a year in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need, and it is why it is so important. I am delighted that my Liberal Democrat colleague in the Commons, Wendy Chamberlain MP, brought forward this Private Member’s Bill with government support, for which I express my thanks.
The Bill will provide, on day one, a right to one week of unpaid leave for carers in employment, with the flexible option to take as little as half a day at a time. This will be available to all employees providing care for a dependant with a long-term care need. Carers will have the time and flexibility for their caring responsibilities and to make the required preparations for the future, such as being able to take half-days off for medical appointments. The Bill will give carers the opportunity to be able to put work to one side and focus solely, for that time, on their caring responsibilities without the added pressures of having to juggle both duties. Although the Bill does not provide carers with a paid leave right, it will nevertheless go a long way towards helping to relieve the financial burden by providing carers with the confidence of job security. It is also an important step in recognising the role of carers in the workplace.
I am pleased that the Bill will support women in particular to stay in work, as they are more likely to juggle work and care and to be a part-time, rather than a full-time, worker. Indeed, the impact assessment produced for the Bill recognises this, stating:
“In the context of the gender pay gap, the fact that women are more likely to provide care means that they are more likely to face adverse employment effects associated with caring i.e., lower earnings and leaving the labour market”.
I hope that the Bill will bring some peace of mind to all employed carers so that they can live in the certainty that their jobs are secure while they are caring for their dependants. I beg to move.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this stage of this important Bill. I acknowledge the very rich debate we had at Second Reading, including the incredible personal testimony from so many Members on behalf of their own families and people they had met in their communities or work. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, laid out, this is an important first step, but we need to acknowledge that there is still much more to do. I emphasise, to avoid any confusion, that this refers to unpaid leave, although many arguments have been made to move to paid leave.
We have heard very clearly that the Bill will help to relieve the stress and isolation that carers often experience—the loneliness, the impact on mental health and, as we have heard, the disproportionate impact on women. But what we also know, which is not emphasised enough, is that the Bill will benefit employers by reducing the risk of the absenteeism, turnover and retention of staff.
All that remains is to thank Wendy Chamberlain MP, the Bill’s sponsor in the other place; the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for bringing it to the Lords; and the cross-party support we have seen. I also refer to the work by Carers UK from which we have all benefited. I thank carers and their families who have shared their stories and experiences. In particular, I make special mention of my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley; she is very sorry not to be able to be here today. I thank her again for her tireless work over many years and her absolute determination to make progress on this really significant issue.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (The Earl of Minto) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for bringing the Bill through the House. The Government have been pleased to support it throughout all its stages. This is in line with our 2019 manifesto, which committed to introduce one week of leave for unpaid carers; I am pleased to continue that support today at Third Reading. I am also very grateful for the cross-party support that the Bill has received.
The Government appreciate the time dedicated by unpaid carers to help those who rely on them for their everyday needs. No one should underestimate the contribution that unpaid carers make. They play a vital role in society, supporting those who are unable to care independently for themselves. Many provide that care while holding down a job. We know that there are some brilliant, supportive and flexible employers out there already who are taking great steps to support those in their workforce with caring responsibilities, recognising the value to both their businesses and their employees of helping carers to stay in work. The Bill will extend aspects of what those employers do voluntarily to all employers, ensuring a baseline of support for all working unpaid carers. This will help to alleviate the pressure that carers—particularly women, who are more likely to provide care—can face as they seek to juggle their work and caring responsibilities.
The new right to carer’s leave will provide more flexibility to those unpaid carers. It will enable them to take more time out of work if they need to. Carer’s leave will allow employees to be absent from work on unpaid leave to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. Eligible employees will be able to take the leave, regardless of how long they have worked for their employer. It will be available from the first day of their employment. The leave will be available to take in increments of half-days, up to a week, to be taken over a 12-month period. Employees will not be required to provide evidence in relation to a request for carer’s leave. Employees taking carer’s leave will have the same employment protections as associated with other forms of family-related leave, including protection from dismissal or detriment as a result of having taken the leave.
I am personally very pleased to support the Bill; it is a huge step in the right direction for our carers, who give their time to help others who need it. I once again thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his sponsorship of the Bill as it has moved through the House. I also thank Wendy Chamberlain and my honourable friend Kevin Hollinrake for their stewardship in the other place and their hard work in putting the Bill forward.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his words, and, more than that, I thank him for the Government’s support for the Bill. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, who pointed to the personal nature of the Bill and the improvements it will give to individuals across the country.
It has been an unusual experience for me to propose, rather than oppose, something, and to have the support of the House, so I thank all noble Lords for that. However, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. From my own Benches, my noble friend Lady Tyler has been a very important supporter of the needs of carers in the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, pointed out, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has been a tireless campaigner for carers, both in the House and through Carers UK. It is a great shame that neither she nor my noble friend were able to be here today, because, frankly, this is the culmination of their work rather than anything I have done.
Wendy Chamberlain did a great job in the Commons in proposing the Bill and stewarding it through. I thank Kathryn Sturgeon, her adviser, who worked very hard with us. I also thank my own adviser, Mohamed-Ali Soudi, in our Lords Whips’ Office, who has been an excellent support in getting this through. Externally, I thank Carers UK and particularly John Perryman and Emily Holzhausen, who have been great in providing briefing support. The Bill team has made sure that I have not fallen over—at least, not yet—so I thank them very much for their support. Finally, once again, I thank the Minister and his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, who both supported the Bill going through.
Royal Assent
Wednesday 24th May 2023
(3 years, 2 months ago)
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