Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill

David Linden Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). When I told him that he had come top of the private Member’s Bills ballot, he thought that I was just someone who was interested, notwithstanding what happened earlier. It was actually because I was so keen to see this Bill come forward. This is a Bill that I sought to introduce in 2018 via the ten-minute rule. It is a testament to how generous and warm my hon. Friend is that he has been presented with this opportunity by winning the parliamentary lottery. Many of us would like to see the private Member’s Bill process reformed, but I am incredibly grateful to him and will be forever in his debt that he has taken the Bill on.

Like my hon. Friend, I pay tribute to the former Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). He and I have been discussing and meeting about this issue. I have questioned him on the Floor of the House for a very long time about it. It became clear that, in the absence of an employment Bill, the most sensible way of dealing with it, particularly given the cross-party support we have, was to decouple it and take this as a stand-alone Bill. I am glad we are going down that route.

I would like to pay tribute to and recognise a few other people, particularly Catriona Ogilvy from The Smallest Things, and Josie Anderson and Beth McCleverty from Bliss. I have been working with them for years on this, and the fact that we are finally seeing the Bill go through the House is a point of enormous pride. It is the culmination of many years of work by not just MPs, which I will come to in a moment, but, most importantly, parents whose children are born premature or sick.

This is actually politics at its best. It is no secret that I am not a fan of this place, and I do everything every single day to try to get out of here, but if the House will indulge me for one moment, this is probably one of the best moments we have had here, because we are seeing politicians coming together, putting party politics aside and using their personal experience.

One of the reasons the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies works so well is that the officers of that group all have one thing in common. It is not the fact that they are Members of Parliament; it is that they are the parents of premature and sick-born babies. I want to thank the hon. Members for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) and for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), and the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) and for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who have come together to put party politics and indeed constitutional politics aside to ensure that we do deliver for those families.

This Bill is not particularly controversial. It is a relatively short Bill and the budget line only commits to about £15 million, as the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate said, in the 2023 Budget, but it will have a massive impact on the families of those 90,000 to 100,000 babies who every year are born in the UK and spend time in neonatal care.

As the House will recall, both of my children—Isaac and Jessica—were born premature. In Isaac’s case, we only had about 14 weeks from finding out that he was going to arrive to his coming into the world. I still remember that moment when it moved to an emergency caesarean and being whipped away to a neonatal intensive care unit, and the real worry going through that time. In both cases—for both my children—my parental leave was well up by the time we got out of hospital. In the case of my daughter Jessica, who is now three years old, she spent roughly the first year of her life on oxygen and many weeks and months in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate hit the nail on the head when he talked about the mental health impact that this has on parents. I still remember vividly, and will until my dying day, watching my daughter turn blue in the incubator, with noises, alarms and lights all going off and neonatal nurses rushing in to resuscitate her. The idea that we as legislators would expect our constituents to be at work when that is happening or, worse still, to do a shift after that is something we are putting right today, because that is a historical wrong.

There is also the point that employers will not get the best out of their employees when they are sitting at work and staring into space, worrying whether or not their child is going to make it through the day. They are also not going to be in a good space when they realise that mum is back in the neonatal intensive care ward and doctors are coming round to talk about the massive consequential decisions that families have to take, while the dad, or another parent perhaps, is sitting in front of a computer in the office. That is why this is so important.

There are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has said, good employers out there already: Sony Music, Waltham Forest Council, South Ayrshire Council all have innovative policies in place. Interestingly, we have a big debate in this House about proxy voting. As far as I understand it, proxy voting still does not have provision for neonatal care leave. Although there will be a period before we can get Royal Assent, this House could get its own house in order by ensuring that we have some form of neonatal leave immediately with proxy voting.

[Hannah Bardell]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent work he has done over many years on this issue. My own chief of staff, Stephanie, had her twin girls—Abi and Jessica—during the deepest, darkest lockdown of the winter of 2020. She had the pressure of having two premature babies, being quite ill and having to go in and out of the neonatal unit. So much of what he says rings true, and I hope I did what I could as an employer, but I felt that my hands were tied by the rules of this place. I remember trying to give her all the support I could, but her partner worked offshore and had to go back offshore; he could not even be in the same place as her after that. Does my hon. Friend agree that everything he says and everything this Bill brings forward will be so important to our constituents, our staff and staff the length and breadth of the country? It should not be left up to individual businesses to make policies; this needs to be in legislation.

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. As well as reforming some of the issues around proxy voting in this place, which I accept impacts only a small amount of us, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which is responsible for setting many of the policies and conditions on how Members of the House employ staff, could do a lot more not just on guidance but to reform the rules.

There are a number of good employers out there—I have mentioned them already—but one thing we saw as a result of the P&O scandal is that, sadly, far too many employers are too tempted to gild the lily, cut corners and undercut their staff. I am conscious that there is cross-party consensus this morning, but I will not depart from the belief that the sooner we have an employment Bill before the House, the better so we could try to deal with some of the other issues, such as the excellent proposition on miscarriage leave made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley). It is important that the Minister considers how we could bring forward an employment Bill. However, ultimately, this Bill will end the lottery that far too many employees across these islands have to deal with. I agree with the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate about the need to expedite the Bill. I still have a concern that, although the Bill will be read a Second time today, we should get it into Committee as soon as possible, and to the Lords. My preference would be to do all stages on the Floor of the House. There is precedent for that. Given the immense cross-party agreement on this, we could get the Bill through in a couple of hours.

I put a direct challenge to whoever the two final candidates are for Prime Minister. I understand that whoever becomes Prime Minister will be enormously tempted to call a snap election. The danger with doing that is that the House would prorogue and the Bill would not receive Royal Assent. I would like a commitment from both candidates that they will not play fast and loose with that.

There are many more things that we can do to try to support families who have had premature or sick babies. We need to look at the neonatal workforce. That is a ticking time bomb that will go off in about 10 years’ time. We need to look at the school admissions code, certainly in England, and look across the UK at the poor hospital accommodation for parents. Far too many parents have to stay in hotels well off site. That is particularly challenging for mothers who are breastfeeding and there are all sorts of other issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East referred to the neonatal expenses fund that we have in Scotland. We are incredibly lucky to have that, but it is not available to our friends in other parts of these islands.

Finally, we will have to look at the postcode lottery and the desert of counselling that exists across health boards and NHS trusts. It has been well rehearsed this morning that having a baby who is born premature or sick can have a serious detrimental impact on the mental health of parents and frankly it is just luck whether they get that support at that time. I very much look forward to the Bill going to Committee, ensuring that it passes through the House speedily and can receive Royal Assent. I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Hunt]

Absolutely, and he is now a Minister of State at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I think hon. Members will agree that he is a committed and compassionate Minister, and I am pleased to be following him and moving this agenda forward—I will have to work very hard indeed to do so. I also thank the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies, and in particular its chair, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden).

Neonatal care leave and pay will enable thousands of parents to care for and be with their children in neonatal care without worrying about whether their job is at risk. I am pleased to see that the Bill has support across the House, as has been reflected in the debate—I thank everybody very much. I will take time to address some of the points raised by hon. Members, but first let me put on the record why the Government support the Bill.

As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East explained, every year in the UK, an estimated 100,000 babies are admitted to neonatal care following their birth, for a range of medical reasons. The United Kingdom has a range of generous entitlements and protections designed to support parents to balance their family and work commitments and maintain their place in the labour market while raising their children. However, for parents in the worrying position of having their newborn admitted to neonatal care, it is clear that the current leave and pay entitlements do not provide adequate support.

In an Adjournment debate on 9 February, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) said:

“The current system is also a massive barrier for fathers and non-childbearing parents in particular. Earlier this week, 75% of parents who responded to a survey from Bliss, the incredible charity, said that they or their partner went back to work before their baby was home from hospital. Some of those children will still have been on ventilation and receiving critical care. Previous research suggests that the most common reason for that is they simply cannot afford to take more time off work. That is happening every single day, right around the country, to families of premature and sick children.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 1054.]

That is why we are here today and have been able to come to an agreement. The Government have previously consulted on the issue. In March 2020, we committed to introducing a new entitlement to neonatal leave and pay. We are pleased to support the Bill, which will bring that policy into effect.

I will address some of the specific points that hon. Members have made. First, I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for bringing forward the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate for bringing his personal experience so emotionally and compassionately to the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) talked particularly about fathers. I absolutely support what she said about giving extra time to both parents to be there for their child. I will refer to some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) later.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East also talked movingly about his personal experience. The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) mentioned a specific case. My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) volunteered in his own Watford hospital—a legacy for all here today, hopefully, we will provide. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) referred to his personal experience and his children, who are clearly taking after their father. On his behalf, I also thank Thomas and Steve, the employers who helped him and his wife and did all they could to support them as members of staff.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) said that the Bill is the right thing to do and talked about bonding time; we must agree that that is a vital relationship for parents at that time. She also said that good employers are already doing the right thing and helping with newborn children. This Bill is a floor, not a ceiling. I want to ensure that everybody gets a good level of care, and other businesses may be able to put something on top of that, as she said.

I will refer to the point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) later. Madam Deputy Speaker, who is no longer in her place, talked about what happened to her and the stressful time that she had in more ways than one. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) pointed out that the child is often not the only child in the family, which must be considered. There were also many helpful and supportive interventions from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate raised concerns about the length of time that it would take for the Bill to be implemented. There is clearly cross-party support for the Bill and we hope that it will complete its parliamentary passage and receive Royal Assent as swiftly as possible. Setting up a new leave and pay entitlement takes time. It requires secondary legislation and changes to Government systems that administer statutory payments, and businesses need good notice in order to prepare. HMRC and commercial payroll providers require at least 18 months’ lead time to implement such changes following Royal Assent. I spoke with my officials this week, however, and we are looking at what we can do to speed that up. I note that the hon. Member for Glasgow East, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), the hon. Member for Newport West all requested that.

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the Minister for her discussions with officials in her Department, but will she undertake to have a conversation with the Leader of the House and business managers to see whether it might be possible to expedite the Bill as we try to get it through the House?

[Jane Hunt]

That is a good idea, and I will take that up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate also raised concerns about why seven full days of neonatal are required before the entitlement is triggered. In response, I flag that the policy is primarily intended to support parents of babies facing longer stays in hospital and that the needs of parents in that position must be balanced against those of their employer. When developing the approach, the responses from parents, parent representative groups and business representatives to the 2019 consultation on neonatal leave and pay were considered.

Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill

David Linden Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th September 2022 Public Bill Committees

Part 3 of the schedule contains further amendments to legislation impacted by neonatal care leave and pay. It sets out the numerous consequential amendments that will be required to ensure that the measure is effective and does not adversely impact on existing legislation. Sixteen Acts will be amended as a consequence of the Bill. I will not go through each and every one of them in turn—

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

What a shame.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I will simply commend part 3 to the Committee. I thank Members for their indulgence.

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

I am pleased that we are back here so soon after Second Reading. It is just a couple of days after recess, which shows how important it is to get a good position on the private Members’ Bill ballot. Again, I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for supporting the Bill and bringing it forward in the way he has. Today he has given a very comprehensive overview of the clauses and the amendments proposed.

I want to make a couple of very quick points. First, amendment 4 is very positive and makes complete sense. I thank the Minister for bringing it forward and supporting it. It will change the details around the qualifying criteria for neonatal care pay. I know there was concern raised by a couple of groups over the summer that certain parents, including women who were on statutory sick pay in particular, would be disadvantaged by the implementation of the Bill as it was drafted. The amendment makes a sensible change and brings the qualifying rules in line with maternity, paternity and adoption pay. It will hopefully receive unqualified support.

I also want to thank the Minister for the work she did over the summer looking into the point I raised on Second Reading about the seven-day trigger. I know it is a small point, but I was grateful that she took it away, looked at it and made sure the drafting was right. I am pleased to hear that it is, and I understand the reasons why it would not have been productive to have changed that in Committee today.

Lastly, I am slightly concerned about some of the noises that are coming out of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the implementation of the Bill. I think that 18 months after Royal Assent is too long and would essentially mean we were looking at implementation in 2025. Really, when all we are talking about is the upgrading of HM Revenue and Customs systems, which we have been talking about for a year or so now, it does not seem like there is any real reason why this has to go on. I know the Minister was very sympathetic when a number of us raised this point on Second Reading, so I am sure she has been pressing the Department over the summer.

There are clear advantages to delivering the money that was set aside from 2023 as quickly as we can. It makes sense to deliver it before a general election for all sorts of reasons, but mainly we want to deliver it quickly to make sure parents are not left in an impossible situation like that which so many have found and continue to find themselves in. I know we all want to see that come to an end as quickly as possible. Will the Minister update us today or in writing on her views about when implementation is likely? I am delighted the Bill is progressing so quickly and has had such unqualified support so far. I thank all members of the Committee for their attendance and for supporting the Bill.

[David Linden]

As ever, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. Your position as Chair makes you unable to comment on the Bill, although I am sure that you would be keen to put your support for it on the record if you could—so I will do that for you. I pay particular tribute to your work with your constituent Coady Dorman and her son Matthew, who was born prematurely. Coady will be incredibly appreciative of the fact that you are chairing the proceedings on the Bill as we expedite it through the House.

Like the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, I thank everybody for the cross-party way in which we are piloting the Bill through the House. As I walked into work this morning, I reflected that I had perhaps been a little unfair to the Minister yesterday during a debate on the devolution of employment rights. Actually, this place probably works at its best when folk work on a cross-party basis; a good example would be the work done by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland on her One Punch assaults campaign. Part of the reason why I was so keen for the Committee to progress quickly was that I suspect some Government Members will not be in their positions by the end of the week as they move, perhaps, into junior ministerial office. It is important that we work on a cross-party basis when we agree on issues. All that is a veiled way of saying sorry to the Minister for giving her such a hard time yesterday.

Like the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, I want to put on the record my support for amendments 1 to 4, the last of which is quite substantial. I share some of his concerns about implementation. One thing that reassured me during my past conversations with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), the former Minister, was learning that BEIS officials had done quite a lot of work on this. Given that we had been led to believe—completely fairly, perhaps—that Government officials had done the groundwork, it strikes me that the 18-month delay for implementation is a little out of kilter. If something needs to be ironed out between BEIS and HMRC, I am sure the Minister will see to that.

Those are the main points that I wanted to put on the record. I do not see a need for the Committee to spend huge amounts of time on the Bill, which is not controversial and already has a budget line of £15 million from a previous Budget. On that basis, I look forward to its passing through this Committee, having its remaining stages on the Floor of the House and then going over to the other place.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jane Hunt)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. Introducing neonatal care and leave through the Bill will mean that parents will not have to worry about work when they face the stress and anxiety of caring for a sick baby. It will at least relieve them of one concern at such a very difficult time.

On Second Reading, we heard from Members on both sides, some of whom are serving on the Committee today, about their personal experiences of having children in neonatal care. Again, I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate, among others, for sharing their personal experiences; that was very much appreciated and I am sure it made a difference on Second Reading. Both Members talked movingly about their personal experiences and explained how incredibly worried they felt when their children were in neonatal care. The Government are keen to offer families in such difficult circumstances our full support, and I am pleased to be here today to reiterate that the Government fully support the Bill.

I would like to touch on the two amendments proposed by the Bill’s promoter. The first would amend clause 2 to remove a power to amend primary legislation by secondary legislation, a so-called Henry VIII power, and replace it with a power to amend secondary legislation only. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East—I have now managed to say his constituency name correctly—points out, the need for that Henry VIII power has passed. Issues with how the entitlement might interact with other legislation that might be forthcoming have been resolved. That being the case, I am in favour of the clause being amended to limit the effect of the power and agree that the amended clause should stand part of the Bill.

The second amendment proposed by the sponsor is to make changes to the relevant week used to calculate pay. Again, I support that change. I agree with the sponsor’s detailed explanation on the need for the amendment, which will ensure that parents who are already low earners do not miss out on the entitlement to statutory neonatal care pay. I therefore support the amended schedule, which should stand part of the Bill. I also agree that clauses 1 to 3 and schedule parts 1 to 3 should stand part of the Bill.