Carer’s Leave Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[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.