Business of the House

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

UKTI has not been “devastated”. I was in touch with it recently when it held a seminar specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises that wanted to export. The seminar was well attended and found to be of great value by those who came along. I could not praise more highly the input of UKTI to that initiative. I would encourage hon. Members who have not already done so to contact UKTI and have a similar seminar in their constituencies.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Another hidden and scandalous form of discrimination in this country is the reluctance of businesses—often small businesses—to hire women of child-bearing age because they fear that they will take maternity leave. May we therefore have a debate on shared parental leave and the importance it will have in ensuring that that form of hidden discrimination ends?

[Sir George Young]

I applaud what my hon. Friend says. It is indeed the Government’s policy to move towards more flexible parental leave so that parents can share caring responsibilities. We are working with businesses to create a more flexible system of parental leave. Under our proposals, parents will be given the choice to determine how they take leave for child care. They will be able to divide the majority of the leave into blocks to suit their work needs, and to split leave between them. I hope that will remove some of the barriers to which my hon. Friend refers.