Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (Second sitting)

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Laura Pidcock]

I know that all this comes, as we mentioned last week, from a place of anxiety of wanting to make sure the Bill passes with ease. I have to politely disagree: I am not sure that this would be a massive shock to business. When I was a manager of a team, albeit within a charity, I still had to make sure that there was enough money in to pay the wages. We very much had to operate like a business.

I hope the new legislation never has to be used, but where it does the entitlement will still be two weeks’ bereavement leave. That is not a considerable time in people’s working lives. Using the time flexibly would have positives for the employer because members of staff, if they were unable to use the entitlement, would often have to call in sick because they were so down and were unable to come in to work.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I extend my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for introducing the Bill. This is my first opportunity to speak on it. I know it has so much support from across the House.

My amendment 20 would extend the period in which parental bereavement leave must be taken from at least 56 days to 26 weeks. That is an important extension, for many of the reasons that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran spoke about. There are particular days and events that happen, such as inquests, and it may be very important for a parent to be able to attend an inquest relating to their child.

As people will know, I speak from personal experience. The inquests relating to my own son were carried out very quickly—in fact, within 24 hours of his death—but I did not get the results for more than two months. That was the time at which I found out the cause of death. It took two months for me to get that information, which effectively flagged it up as a streptococcal infection, whereas it had been assumed that it had been sudden infant death syndrome. That pointed very strongly to the actions of the midwives, who had not picked it up. I then had to raise issues with the NHS hospital trust in relation to how it had reacted to various telephone calls and things that I had made prior to my son dying. That flexibility, and extending that period, is really important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton has already praised Elliot’s footprint, Bliss, Together for Short Lives, the National Bereavement Alliance and the Rainbow Trust. They all make incredibly important points, as did the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran. It simply cannot be predicted how events will play out, and therefore that flexibility over when the leave may be taken is incredibly important. I am conscious that many parents qualify for bereavement leave through statutory parental leave, but for those who do not, this is a really important protection.

Grief comes in waves, and we do not know when it will hit us. I had a child who was also bereaved, because she had lost her brother. Support for a sibling is there in other legislation, where parents are entitled to ask for flexible working or to take time off. Again, the flexibility of knowing that leave can be more than a day and that people can devote their attention and time to coping with grief suffered by other family members, rather than their own grief, is really important. More than that, it helps fathers, who may find going back to work a comfort.

Sometimes, being able to go back to one’s job quite quickly gives people security and routine, which perhaps allows them to cope with grief in a different way at a slightly later stage. It also means that parents can stagger arrangements, so that mum can be at home at one point and dad at others. The amendment would introduce a degree of flexibility, which, to an extent, covers issues that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham, and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran both spoke about. This is an important amendment that would add to the legislation, and I urge my hon. Friends and the Minister to consider it because of the extension of time that it would bring to parents.

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[David Linden]

I find myself in a difficult position. I am minded to press the amendment to a vote, but it would be the first time I have divided the Committee, which in the light of my earlier comments is not something that I want to do. A lot has been said about the fragility of the Bill and the difficulty of getting it through Parliament, but one thing that has not been acknowledged is that we are in a two-year Parliament, so it is not as if we have to get the Bill passed before Prorogation in March.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I hear the note of concern in the hon. Gentleman’s voice, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester raised a valid point: a parent may well be in a better position in which they already have an entitlement to a paid day without it being taken out of their leave. I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider whether that is a valid argument that should be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Pidcock]

I just want to point out that the Library said in bold that these are “very crude” figures on the extension of age—otherwise it might not provide me with any research ever again. It has been pointed out before that not all those parents of children between nought and 40 would be in employment, so there would be some mitigation there. Perhaps an exercise can be done to work out on average how many people who die are of working age and have parents in the workforce, but that is not for now.

This strikes at the morality of the Bill. It has been mentioned that the Bill is about the tasks that need to be carried out after the death of a child or in that grieving period, but I agree with the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran—I do not want to sound like a broken record—that this is about the recognition of grief, not just tasks, although grief can be exacerbated and it can be more difficult to heal and recover if people are not able to do the tasks that are part of the journey to recovery. I also agree that a child never ceases to be a child in their parents’ eyes.

I want to make a political point in what has, so far, not been a very political Committee: it seems so hard to get such things through the Treasury. We are scrabbling around, arguing and making the case for a 60-year-old worker to have two weeks off if their child is 30, but it seems so easy for the Treasury to do other things at the stroke of a pen. That is not the fault of the Bill or necessarily of this Government, but it seems that the system values some things much more than others, including employment rights.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

This is a very important Bill. As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton have pointed out, this is the first time that an extension in this area has been considered. There is an argument that goes, “If the parents, why not the siblings? And if the siblings, why not the aunts and uncles or other close family members?”

Much like my hon. Friend, I have reservations, but I do not want to jeopardise the Bill because the principle that it sets out is so important. There is no doubt that if one of my sisters died, I would be devastated. We have to strike a balance between rights and responsibilities, which is very difficult to do in relation to grief.

[Laura Pidcock]

The point has been well made that the Bill is about parental bereavement. Back-Bench Members may want to introduce Bills about other forms of grief, but we are concentrating on parental bereavement in all its forms. I would imagine that when a child dies, grief is pronounced, raw and painful irrespective of age. My intention is for those people to be included—not, of course, at the expense of the complete destruction of the Bill.

Amendment 12 recognises that some people have to care for dependent children for much longer than 18 years—I am sure my father would argue that I am still dependent, and I am 30. Full-time carers have to care for their children because they have a lifelong disability and a recognised dependency. I urge hon. Members to support amendment 12 if they cannot support amendment 6.

[Will Quince]

I will speak to amendments 14 and 15. One of the hardest elements of the Bill is the definition of a child. Amendments 14 and 15 would define a child as a person under the age of 18 or in full-time education, or both. These are probing amendments and I do not intend to press them to a vote, for all of the reasons that I have set out in our previous sessions.

In my ten-minute rule Bill, I defined a child as a person under the age of 18, in compulsory full-time education, or both. I think my amendments are fundamentally flawed, because they say, “in full-time education, or both” but of course somebody can go back to full-time education at a later stage—they could be a mature student. Somebody in their 30s, 40s or 50s could be caught under the scope of the amendments, and that is certainly not the intention.

What I want is to get us all talking about where we should set the legal definition. The hon. Member for Glasgow East referenced teenagers in his points about teenage cancer, but of course teenagers are pre-18 and post-18, because someone who is 19 is also a teenager. The age of 18 is the point at which we all accept that there is a legal responsibility for dependents, and it is also when we can leave full-time education. However, as we all know from our days at school, people can be old for their class—they could be 18 and still in secondary school doing their A-levels. We have to consider that.

I hope the Minister can take the amendments away and look at them. There is that element of “compulsory” —those who are still at school; that would not catch people who are at university. However, there is an argument for doing so, because many students are still wholly dependent on their parents. There is also the issue of apprenticeships and so on, which are not necessarily compulsory post-18; nevertheless, students are on a relatively low income, so will be dependent on their parents. They are often living at home.

I hope the Committee will consider the amendments in more depth, so that we can work out what the right age is. Certainly, considering compulsory full-time education might be one of the potential solutions.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I shall speak to amendments 18 and 19, which would add the words

“or a person under the age of 25 with a lifelong disability and a recognised dependency.”

The Bill applies to children under the age of 18, for all the reasons raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. Amendments 18 and 19 would extend the definition of “child” for the purposes of parental bereavement leave and pay to those under the age of 25 with a lifelong disability and recognised dependency.

From my own experience with the children’s hospices that work in my area, they have a cut-off of around the age of 25 for those with disability or illness—they are classified as still entitled to attend the children’s hospice as opposed an adults’ hospice up to that point.

Therefore, there should be an extension to cover disability and dependency. We know that the care offered by parents to those with a disability or a recognised dependency is very often very high, and they will have provided extensive love and support to their child. There are many parents who have children with a disability or a lifelong dependency who, sadly, do not make it to the age of 25. I question whether my amendment should be limited to 25 for such cases—

[Laura Pidcock]

How about the hon. Lady supporting my amendment, which does not cap this at 25?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I saw the hon. Lady’s amendment and given that the Minister is consulting on a number of matters, I hope he might consider extending the consultation to the amendments. Where there is a high level of recognised dependency, the bond between parent and child is very high, largely because parents in the main, although it is often women who do this, have been carers at a level not necessarily offered in other circumstances.

I am not saying that the grief is any less, but that level of contact with the child will extend beyond the age of 18, whereas in other circumstances many children will have left home and be living independent lives. This is a probing amendment, but one the Government would do well to address, because I suspect there will be easily-available figures from Government data for the number of people covered. The Minister should be able to find that information fairly easily, although there might be implications for that extension.

[Andrew Griffiths]

This has been a very thoughtful and interesting debate. I draw the Committee’s attention back to the first speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. I think he used the phrase “do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Members new to the House might not realise that this is the third time that an hon. Member has tried to take through a Bill on parental bereavement leave. The first attempt by Tom Harris was unsuccessful, as was the next by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. This is the first time not only that such a Bill has got to this stage, but that any Government have given it backing.

Many Members will say it is outrageous that in 2018 we do not have those rights in statute. I would agree, but the reality is that we do not. There are many reasons for that, given by many Governments of many colours and of different make-up, and for why such a Bill has been resisted. We have an opportunity this time to get a Bill across the line. I politely say to the hon. Member for Glasgow East that, although I understand his desire to press his amendment, he will risk the passage of the Bill if it is used as a Christmas tree on which to hang all our aspirations.

The Bill provides the minimum that we would like to see for bereaved parents in this area, but we need to get it on the statute book. We can have as many lofty aspirations as we wish and we can desire to set the bar as high as we like, but we need to make this real. Various Governments of various colours have been unable to commit to do that, and this is the first time that a Government have committed to support the legislation and make it law. I politely and gently encourage hon. Members to think about that before they decide to press amendments that could risk the Bill’s potential.

To speak to the substance of the amendments, where to draw a line on age was always going to be difficult. I recognise why hon. Members suggest the dates they do. A lost life is always terrible, even more so when a child has not had the chance to live to adulthood. The loved ones who survive that child are left rebuilding and coping in a way that is difficult to imagine for those of us who are fortunate enough never to have been in that position.

Amendments 6 and 7 propose to extend this provision to parents of children of any age. The Bill applies to parents of children under the age of 18. Much as I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, and would like the Bill to cover parents of all children who have passed away irrespective of age, to do so would have financial implications that cannot be ignored. I draw the Committee’s attention to the Exchequer estimate that the annual cost of statutory bereavement pay would be between £1.2 million and £2 million, with a best estimate of £1.77 million. The estimated cost to business––the employer––is £1.45 million and we estimate that, as drafted, the Bill will cover 5,600 parents.

The hon. Member for North West Durham sheepishly proposes the numbers in the Library note that she has received, and I do not disagree with those: she estimates 29,000 parents for children up to the age of 40. Look at the magnitude of the change from 5,600 to 29,000, when the cost is £2 million for the lower figure. We see how the cost of the Bill suddenly begins to increase dramatically. I urge caution, because there are other things to consider when we look at the Bill’s viability and future. The broader the Bill’s coverage, the more it will cost both the state and employers, in terms of absence costs. I therefore believe that the right balance is to ensure that parents of children up to the age of 18 are covered by the Bill.

I do not for one second underestimate the devastation of a parent losing a child at any age. I look to my own experience. My Auntie Ann had a seriously mentally and physically handicapped daughter called Margaret, who died at the age of 56. She had never been out of a wheelchair in her life, and my Auntie Ann was by then a widow in her late 70s. She was absolutely devastated by the loss of Margaret. As a family, we had always assumed that Auntie Ann would go and we would make provision to care for Margaret. The shock when Margaret was diagnosed with cancer and died very quickly hit the whole family. I do not for one minute underestimate the loss of a child at any age, but, for the sake of securing the Bill, I think we have to draw a line.