Fertility Treatment and Employment Rights

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on her wonderful campaign. If I can support it, I will do so.

By coincidence, this morning we were discussing general cultural issues related to getting pregnant. The conclusion was that if a man had a child—if it is clear what I mean—that would be an excuse for the employer to give him a pay rise and to change his job. If a woman gets pregnant, she is just put to one side. We have heard how the whole fertility treatment process is very stressful. In fact, we have only heard about a portion of it. If we read about the number of tests that they need and the details of how they go through it, we can see how very frightening it can be. I think we have to remember the effects of that stress on people’s work.

It is not just women who are involved in this; males can have infertility problems as well. They can be due to lifestyle habits, for example smoking, or hormonal changes, for example low testosterone. That leads me to mention some figures produced by AXA. One of the most important was that 85% of employees undergoing fertility treatment said that it had had a negative impact on their work. A phenomenal number of people involved in this process experience a profoundly negative impact on their work.

We have already heard that a third of those undergoing IVF treatment—in fact the figure that I saw was 38%, so it is a little higher than a third—have either considered or have actually quit their jobs as a result of the impact on particularly their mental health. Although we have tried to separate mental health from other reasons for approaching this subject, we cannot separate them. They are intimately linked, and the mental health applications that take place have to be looked at very carefully and with a great deal of consideration.

I cannot understand why a business would not want to allocate time specifically for fertility treatment. I cannot understand why it is not part of their natural, compassionate approach to dealing with employees. They are compassionate in many other ways, which is to be applauded, but given that this issue directly affects the work that people undertake and the way in which they operate, I cannot understand why businesses do not allocate time for fertility treatment.

I am pleased by the number of companies that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has already signed up to her campaign, and I look forward to their involvement and to being able to take it forward. As we have heard, this issue is a major problem not just for this country, but for the western world. Unless we take it seriously, we will end up in even greater trouble than we would otherwise be, and I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she has done to make sure that we are all aware of it.