Pregnancy: Discrimination at Work

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Popat]

The noble Baroness raises a very important question. We must get to the root cause of this employment discrimination and find out which groups of pregnant women are most at risk of discrimination and which types of employers—looking at size and sector, for example—are most likely to get complaints from female employees, so that we know where the issues to be addressed exist. That is why the Government have commissioned the largest ever study of pregnancy and maternity-related discrimination in Great Britain.

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

Is it not the case that if we were to look at responsible business practice, and the return to the employer of acting responsibly, we would find that those women who are protected and whose jobs are secure after they come back into the workplace repay those companies more than twofold by their loyalty and commitment to the organisation? Could not the Government publicise this more?

[Lord Popat]

I agree with the noble Baroness, which is why we are carrying out in-depth research into the aspect of what more we can do. It is important that more women have the choice of family and work at the same time. I hope that the research will come up with a recommendation on what more the Government can do. But this is an area that we do take seriously. We have a larger number of women working at the moment than we had in 2010, and of course we want more of them to come back to work—hence the Government have come up with a number of different schemes, including the nursery allowance and all that, to encourage them to come back to work.