Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014.

Relevant documents: 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations 2014 be considered by the House. In doing so, I shall speak also to the Maternity and Adoption Leave (Curtailment of Statutory Rights to Leave) Regulations 2014 and the Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014.

We are here today to consider changes to the law on family-related leave and pay. These changes started with the Children and Families Act 2014, which enables Parliament to make regulations introducing shared parental leave and pay. These regulations give qualifying working parents a new statutory right to share leave and pay where the mother has taken, or intends to take, less than her full statutory maternity entitlement—that is less than 52 weeks’ leave in the case of maternity leave, and less than 39 weeks’ pay in the case of statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance. The new system will apply to working parents who are expecting a baby which is due on or after 5 April 2015. These regulations put in place the overarching legal framework for shared parental leave and pay and set out how this will work in practice.

Noble Lords may be wondering why it is necessary to make these changes. They are required because the laws on maternity and paternity leave and pay that we have now are rigid and inflexible. They have failed to keep pace with the modern family and the modern workplace.

Looking first at the modern family, the current law assumes that the child’s mother is always the main carer. This is clearly not the case for many families, as women now make up almost half of the United Kingdom’s workforce. The role of women in the workplace has changed dramatically since women were given rights to maternity leave and pay in the 1970s. In nearly a third of households, women are the main earners. It is therefore unsurprising that many women choose to return to work sooner than they would have done historically. Women return to work for a variety of reasons, including financial reasons, as well as a desire to avoid any setbacks to their career or work prospects that may follow a prolonged period of absence from the workplace. The changes to the law that we are considering are therefore partly about reflecting modern life. The regulations before us restructure the legal framework to make it easier for mothers to stay in the labour market, if they wish to do so.

The Government also have a more ambitious agenda. We want to facilitate a cultural shift towards the removal of outdated beliefs about the role of fathers and partners in caring for their children. Evidence shows that where fathers and partners are involved early on in the life of the child, they are more likely to stay involved and that there are positive benefits not just for the children but for society generally. However, the current law propagates outdated assumptions. Instead of supporting fathers and partners who want to play an active role in caring for their children, it hinders them by placing constraints around how much time they can take off from work.

The current arrangements can be unhelpful to fathers and partners who want to, or who out of necessity have to, be the primary carer. The current law enables fathers and partners to take one or two weeks’ paternity leave within the first eight weeks following birth—a position that will remain the case after these regulations are passed—and further leave later on, but only if the mother has returned to work, whereas those regulations will be subsumed by the regulations before us. In short, parents, including fathers, have some choice about who cares for their children, but it is a limited choice. The Government believe that working parents should be able to decide for themselves which of them is best placed to care for the child. We do not want to force arrangements on working parents which may not work for them or their employers. We believe that fathers and partners should be able to be the primary carers, if the parents wish that, and that mothers who want to work should be given rights which make their transition back to work easier.

Shared parental leave and pay enables fathers and partners to be the main carers if they so wish, both parents to spend time at home together and the parents to stagger their leave so that one of them is at home when the other is at work. In enabling them to share the responsibility for the care of their child, we enable both parents to maintain stronger links with the labour market. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, enabling employees to maintain links with the labour market and individual employers has many benefits for business. These include lower staff turnover and therefore lower recruitment and training costs. Employees who have a better work/life balance are also likely to take less sick leave and to have higher levels of commitment to their employers and work generally.

The Maternity and Adoption Leave (Curtailment of Statutory Rights to Leave) Regulations would specifically enable a mother to give her employer notice to end her maternity leave early, on a date which she chooses, and to indicate that she or her partner intends to take shared parental leave. The word “curtailment” in the title of the regulations is perhaps unfortunate; it gives the impression that something is being lost by this when in reality it is an option to share the leave with the father or partner.

Once notice has been given, there are only very limited circumstances in which the mother can reverse her decision. The mother needs to end her maternity leave early to create shared parental leave for her and her employed partner to take. In essence, the untaken balance of the mother’s maternity leave is used to create the shared parental leave. Where the mother creates shared parental leave by giving her employer binding notice, her employed partner can start to take some or all of this leave while the mother is still on maternity leave, so that both parents can be at home together with their child if they so wish. Because the mother chooses the date when her maternity leave will end, she remains in control of the number of weeks of maternity leave that she takes. If she wants to take the full 52 weeks of maternity leave to which she is entitled, she can do so. This is the default position if the mother does not opt into shared parental leave.

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Despite those comments and a number of questions, we entirely welcome the proposals.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to what has been a very interesting debate, and for the support around the Room. I am delighted that noble Lords have supported the regulations and to see strong support for the new shared parental leave and pay system.

I shall try to deal first with the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. First, on couples who are not part of a typical family unit, including where they are living apart, providing that they meet the definition of partners, spouses or civil partners, they are fully covered. I take the point, also made by my noble friend Lady Brinton, that families come in all shapes and sizes now. The Government have certainly done our best to accommodate that, so I hope that I can give reassurance on that point.

The noble Baroness also asked about having some way to facilitate agreement between the partners and what happened where people are living apart. Clearly, the Government are unable to legislate for every situation. It is incumbent on partners, where they are living apart or otherwise, to come to an agreement. Underlying all this is the principle that that has to be in the interests of the child.

If I may, I shall come to some points raised by the noble Baroness about the code of practice when I deal with the points raised by my noble friend Lady Brinton.

Parties are entitled to shared paternity leave. The interests of both working partners are fully protected, both the father and mother, on an equal basis. A code of practice has already been developed by ACAS, which has been warmly welcomed. No doubt it will be monitored and, if changes are necessary, they can be made to it as things progress. We should not see this as something set in stone and adamantine; if changes are needed, I am sure that they can be made.

I turn to points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young, thanking him for his kind remarks and the historical journey that he took us on; I suspected that there might be a bit of party knockabout. I fully recognise that these regulations are supported across the Room, and rightly so. It makes the cultural change that we all want that much easier if we all support it and are doing everything we can to make sure that it happens.

I can reassure the noble Lord about the rollout. He is right that we need to do more on that to make sure that it is taken fully on board by those who are prospective beneficiaries of it. At the moment, it is featured on the GOV.UK website, and there is evidence that there has been a lot of downloads by employers, so they are aware of this. We have to make sure that employees are aware of this, such as the potential family to which my noble friend referred. Perhaps these regulations should be named after them, if they are taking full benefit of this as pioneers. But it is important, in all seriousness, that we make sure that the messages are rolled out. This is being done through the TUC, the CBI, the FSB and the National Childbirth Trust. I have asked officials to look at the possibility of ensuring that information is available through commercial outlets such as Mothercare. It seems to me that places such as that would be a good way of trying to get the message across so that we ensure that everybody benefits in the way that we want, not just the families, partners and children concerned but society in general, as we want that cultural shift.

These regulations will enable working parents better to balance their caring and work responsibilities and will enable employers to plan for the periods when their employees will be absent from work on shared parental leave. I commend these statutory instruments to the Committee. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.