Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill

Chris Philp Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I am delighted she was able to come off the Front Bench and give the speech she just made. It is a pleasure and privilege to have listened to everything she had to say.

I am delighted to give my strong support to the Bill today. I pay huge tribute to the Members who have brought it here. Of course it stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who chose to bring it here and introduced it with such eloquence and passion, but, as many others have said, other Members have worked very hard on this issue for a number of years. My hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) have shown enormous courage and compassion in bringing difficult personal experiences here to Parliament to ensure that the law will operate for other people in a way that will help them. Their conduct on this issue shows Parliament at its best; it shows Parliament demonstrating compassion, and people coming here with real experience and using it to improve the lives of our fellow citizens. I congratulate and pay huge tribute to all of those Members who have brought us to where we stand today.

Other Members have spoken eloquently about the Bill’s merits. In a way, it is sad that it is even necessary, because if all employers behaved with compassion and sensitivity, it would not be. But we have heard examples where employers, either deliberately or just through carelessness, have not behaved as they should towards bereaved parents. Making sure that it is compulsory that they do behave decently is exactly the right thing to do.

Some Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, have drawn attention to the pay component. It is not enough simply to give people time off work and to make that automatic; it is important that people get some pay for that, too. That is particularly the case in order to help people on lower incomes, for whom a loss of pay even for a couple of weeks is a really serious matter. I am therefore delighted that the Bill encompasses not only time off, but pay.

I should like to raise an issue, and I hope that the Minister will respond to it. It is closely linked to the issues in the Bill, and it might be something that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton and the Government could consider in Committee if it were in order to do so. If not, perhaps the Government could consider it more generally. It relates to children who are born incredibly prematurely. My twins were born at 25 weeks and one day. For many parents whose children are born so prematurely, there is not a happy ending. I saw many parents in the University College hospital neonatal unit who had been bereaved following the birth of their children at that level of prematurity. Thanks to the miracles of modern science, however, some children do survive, and thankfully my twins were among them.

A Croydon resident, Catriona Ogilvy, has articulated a good case for giving the parents of extremely premature babies extended maternity leave. The case that Catriona makes is that when the baby comes out of the neonatal intensive care unit, they will often be like any other baby, but while they are in the unit, the parents often have to be present almost 24 hours a day. There is a case for offering parents extended statutory maternity leave with pay when the baby is born before 30 or perhaps 34 weeks’ gestation. I realise that this might be outside the scope of the Bill, given its short and long titles. If it is within the scope of the Bill, I would certainly urge my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton to consider tabling amendments that speak to this point. If it is not, I would be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about Catriona Ogilvy’s suggestion. I believe it would be an improvement to our legislation if we could consider moves in that area.

I put on record once again my congratulations to the Members involved in bringing in the Bill. I strongly commend it to the House and hope that it will progress rapidly through the various stages of parliamentary approval and get on to the nation’s statute book as expeditiously as possible.