Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider the following:

Clause 2 stand part.

Clause 3 stand part.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone, and to bring to Committee the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill. It is great to see the Minister in his place and I warmly congratulate him on his appointment. I am very grateful for his support. I am also very grateful to all his predecessors. There have been a number: the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), the hon. Member for Loughborough—she was very, very helpful and I am grateful to her, as I am to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who is now an Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. All of them were very helpful and very supportive of the Bill in its early stages, so I thank them. I also want to take the opportunity again to thank officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for their excellent work and support in ensuring that we got to this point. Thank you very much to them.

It is good to see so many Members here today. I am sure we can all agree that it is encouraging that we are back so soon after Second Reading. I thank everyone who contributed to that. It was a very positive and constructive Second Reading and I think it showed the House at its best.

Let me move to the matter in front of the Committee today. Finding out that you are pregnant, becoming a parent, having a baby or adopting a child is supposed to be one of the happiest times in someone’s life, but, for many new parents, the newborn baby bubble is burst by the news that they are being laid off. In 2016, an Equality and Human Rights Commission survey commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that three in four women—I emphasise: three in four women—experienced pregnancy and maternity discrimination. Some 54,000 women a year lose their job simply because they are pregnant. It is a scandal. We are six years on from those shocking findings, but action has not yet been taken to tackle the industrial-scale discrimination that women face. That is what we are here to do today.

As all right hon. and hon. Members know, people are facing a cost of living crisis, wages are shrinking and childcare costs are soaring. What new parents need is job security and, as Members know, this Bill seeks to provide that by extending redundancy protections in the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999to the period of pregnancy. The protections will also apply to shared parental and adoption leave, and a period after a new parent returns to work. This means that a statutory duty will be placed on employers to prioritise pregnant women and new parents in a redundancy situation by offering them a suitable alternative vacancy if their job becomes at risk. As Members on both sides of the House agreed on Second Reading, that will make a big difference to thousands of working families; half a million women are pregnant every year.

I want to raise just one issue with the Minister, which relates to the six-week qualifying period and about which I wrote to two of his predecessors. Although these measures will not be in the Bill, they are important. Currently, there is within the regulations a qualifying period, whereby a new parent must take six consecutive weeks of family leave to be entitled to the redundancy protections. I know that the threshold is in place to try to ensure that the protections are proportionate and to avoid a scenario whereby a partner who takes one week of shared parental leave is not afforded the same protection as a woman who takes 12 months of maternity leave. However, I share the concerns that that could disproportionately impact a new mother who is forced to curtail her maternity leave for whatever reason, returning to work unprotected and vulnerable.

I have been assured that a consultation is being carried out with the Pregnancy and Maternity Discrimination Advisory Board, and I am pleased that the Government are consulting stakeholders before a final decision is taken. The Minister does not need to respond today, but I ask him to give good consideration to the board’s proposals. I am hopeful that when it reconvenes later in the autumn consensus will be reached, and we will be able to protect as many new mothers as possible with the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is incredibly important to get this right, as we said. The key thing is to consult widely with stakeholders. That is what we are doing, and we have done so with the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, who is promoting the Bill. A final decision will be made as quickly as possible.

On employment tribunals, there are clearly problems across the system, primarily due to the pandemic. All these cases need to be accelerated. It is not acceptable that people are having to wait for justice. I absolutely understand the calls to improve the system. We are working hard to do that. The hon. Member for Bradford East made a point about a potential weakening or watering down of employment regulations. I do not see any appetite on this side of the political fence, or indeed his side, to do that. I think it is highly unlikely that that would be something that Government Members would support.

The Government continue to support the measures in the Bill, which would provide valuable support and protection for parents during some of the most challenging and exciting days of their lives. Supporting this Bill is in line with our ongoing commitment to support workers and build a high-skilled, high-productivity and high-wage economy. I was greatly heartened to hear many contributors on Second Reading making the economic case to keep new parents in the workplace. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central to support the Bill during its passage through the House.

[Dan Jarvis]

Members of the Committee will be relieved to hear that I am going to be very brief. I am under strict orders from the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham not to stand between him and a bacon sandwich, so I will be very brief. I particularly enjoyed the Minister’s description of the Second Reading debate as a five-hour group hug. It feels as if we have had another group hug this morning, though fortunately not one that has gone on for five hours.

I would like to make one parochial point. From my personal point of view, it is great to see some co-operation between south-west and north Yorkshire. I will not test the Minister’s patience by seeking to expand the point about what we might be able to achieve if we worked closely together in Yorkshire, but I hope that The Yorkshire Post is listening. I will say no more than that.

I am incredibly grateful for the excellent contributions this morning and for all the support from hon. and right hon. Members throughout proceedings on the Bill. I also want to thank the various stakeholders, including the EHRC, the Trades Union Congress, the Royal College of Midwives, Unison, the Fawcett Society, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the CBI and Working Families. They have all been incredibly helpful and helped get us to this point, as have the officials in the Department and the Clerks of the House. Finally, I want to thank everybody for their attendance and support today. I hope we can continue to work together in the constructive spirit that has brought us to this point.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 and 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill to be reported, without amendment.