Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill

Debate between Angela Richardson and Scott Benton

3rd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) and to congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on bringing this incredibly important Bill all the way to Third Reading. I regularly receive emails from constituents who care as deeply as all of us in this place do about making sure that pregnant women and new parents are protected in the workplace. I pay tribute to campaign groups such as Pregnant Then Screwed and groups such as Mumsnet that help to shine a light on all the injustices that are faced.

It has taken a long time, but we have made progress in making sure that the rights of pregnant women and those who want to start families are protected. I remember in the early 2000s, having just been married and allowed for the first time to take up a permanent role in this country, I was asked at interviews what my hobbies were. I said that I enjoyed knitting and was asked, “Is that for babies?” Of course, that sort of thing is not allowed these days. I was able to say that no, I had not knitted any baby things at that point, although it was not long after that that I was knitting them.

As someone who has had six pregnancies, three of which resulted in live, successful births, I am delighted that this legislation is finally coming forward. It has been a long time coming. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central cited the 2016 research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that found that approximately one in nine mothers—11% of them—reported that they were dismissed, made compulsorily redundant when others in the workplace were not, or treated so poorly that they had to leave their job. That is a huge indictment of the workplace in 2016, which is not that long ago. It is clear that work still needs to be done.

It was good that the Women and Equalities Committee followed up with an inquiry and report on pregnancy and maternity discrimination in August 2016. These things always seem to take time. The Government responded in 2017 and acknowledged the scale of the pregnancy and maternity discrimination that was experienced. It is important that the Government recognised that they needed to bring forward proposals to ensure that protections were in place. In January 2019, the Government published a consultation to seek views on extending the protections. It was good that, in the 2019 manifesto on which I stood for election, the Conservatives committed to addressing pregnancy and maternity discrimination.

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech highlighting the injustices that pregnant women and new mums face in the workplace. The Bill will go an awful long way towards addressing some of the challenges and injustices. Does she agree that the Government generally have a very good record on employment legislation since 2010? In 2019, Government Members stood on a manifesto commitment to further improve protections against pregnancy and maternity discrimination and to continue to ensure it is outlawed. Does she agree that the Bill is an important step towards achieving that?

[Angela Richardson]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That has been the case since 2010. Those of us who stood in 2019 participated in Zoom debates in early 2020, in the middle of covid, to discuss workers’ rights and maternity provisions, and talked about what the Government had been doing to protect women.

I draw attention to clause 1(4), which allows for the regulations to provide for the protected period of pregnancy to commence after the pregnancy has ended. It allows, for example, a woman who has miscarried before, in informing her employer of the pregnancy, to access the redundancy protection that she would have been entitled to had she first informed her employer.

It is incredibly important that we in this place recognise the effects of miscarriage. At the start of my speech, I talked about the fact that I had had three live births, but I also lost three babies. I do not think that people realise the impact that that has on a woman, in terms not just of her physical health—a drop-off in oestrogen after a pregnancy can have an impact on full-term pregnancy and on those who have miscarried—but of her mental health. There may also be issues in the second trimester—I faced the issue in one of my pregnancies—with the milk coming in. You might not be prepared for those sorts of things. There is also the delivery. Many people think that when you lose a baby, it is a clean operation—somebody goes in and sorts things out—but quite often, one delivers the lost baby. The recovery time for that is quite extended and important, especially if you have other small children to care for at the time.

All the protections in the Bill are incredibly important. I know from my own personal experience how important it is to recognise what women go through when they are trying to start a family or have more children in their family. I will be watching carefully how the Bill is implemented. Employers must take the protections incredibly seriously. I hope that when surveys are done—as they were in 2016—we see not just that the numbers have come down under the legislation, but that zero women face this sort of discrimination in the workplace.