Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]]

I also welcome this Bill in principle and as far as it goes, which is not far enough, but perhaps it is a sign that this House and the UK Government recognise that they have some way to go to begin catching up with the world around them.

On issues of equality and of acknowledging and breaking down barriers, this House deservedly has a reputation for making progress very slowly. Today we are discussing something that should surely already be in place, not simply because elected office should not be a barrier to a family, but because attitudes and practices here have a material impact on the lack of proper treatment and the prevalence of issues such as maternity and pregnancy discrimination outside this place.

It was not until 1975 that statutory maternity leave was introduced in the UK through the Employment Protection Act 1975—later than in most countries in Europe. Indeed, with this Bill, welcome though it is, progress continues to be too slow. Here, the perplexing basis for maternity leave is that the Minister must seek permission from the Prime Minister to take such leave, the implication being that the Prime Minister retains the power to say, “No, the maternity leave is not granted.” How very Edwardian in 2021.

The rest of the world has long since moved on to the position that maternity leave should be a right rather than a discretionary benefit. How we can expect people to appreciate that and act in that way if this place is so backward-looking? It should not be necessary for women to seek the potentially grudging consent of a boss to take maternity leave.

I was fortunate when I twice took maternity leave to have a supportive and encouraging boss. It was clear to me that I had the right and, importantly, the support to take the leave that was right for me and my family. I wonder how I would have felt if the ability to grant my leave was in the gift of my boss, given that we cannot always be guaranteed the supportive boss that I had. For me, that happened well before any involvement in politics.

Our representation is clearly not reflective of who we are. We are far less diverse as a political class than those we represent, and the lack of proper provision for maternity feeds into that. We cannot expect that lack of representation to improve unless we improve the structures that we work within. I wonder whether I would have wanted to stand for election to this place as a younger woman starting a family, considering the various challenges, including gaps in provision for MPs and Ministers.

We have heard about heavily pregnant MPs being wheeled through the Lobby recently, against all logic and surely against advice, because the arcane processes of this House were simply not set up to accommodate their needs. This House can and should be better than that. We have a duty to be better. We cannot simply go along with the make-do-and-mend approach that the UK Government have had for so long.

The posts of Ministers on maternity leave have been left vacant, and their responsibilities have been carried out as best as possible by colleagues who are also carrying out their own responsibilities. The one thing that has saved all that from crumbling is that no one fulfilling a Secretary of State role in the UK Government has ever tried to take maternity leave. That fact reveals a great deal about the relative importance of the issue in the minds of those at the very top.

We have rightly heard comments about the contrast between arrangements in the House and those outside it. That is important. The contrast between the speed at which the Bill has been progressed and the shocking delays in dealing with the pressing needs of pregnant women in the pandemic is stark and just not good enough. The fact that maternity allowance is just £151.20 a week, which is about half the national minimum wage for a full-time worker, is deplorable. The fact that it will increase by only 77p a week in April is frankly an insult. Those issues must also be addressed. I realise that they are not before us today, but they all fit together into a lack of care and direction from the Government.

The mechanism that the Bill identifies for repairing the current crumbling edifice of ministerial maternity cover should be uncontroversial. Any organisation needs to provide for such events, which routinely happen, so I hope that no one would seriously suggest that, in a large ministerial team, there should not be contingencies to support maternity leave. However—I repeat myself in case we lose sight of the point—it is incredible that it has taken until 2021 for the UK Government and the House to address the matter.

The explanatory notes describe provision for maternity leave as problematic or “particularly difficult to apply” to a Minister in a very senior office, such as a Secretary of State,

“because the legal exercise of functions of such roles cannot be ‘covered’ by another Minister.”

I am afraid that I do not buy that. That is just a cop-out. It sounds like exactly the kind of excuse that has been used by backsliders on this issue ever since the idea of maternity leave in employment entered our thinking. It is followed by the statement:

“The result is that a Minister in such a role who wished to take extended maternity leave would need to resign their office.”

It is breathtaking to see that kind of language. It makes us check our calendars to make sure that we are in 2021. How can we expect improvements and proper treatment outside this place if that is how we run things here?

The explanatory notes reveal exactly the kind of thinking that we all know still goes on in recruitment to senior jobs, and that results in the glass ceiling for women in so many institutions. They display the unconscious bias that underpins so much systemic discrimination in the UK and around the world.

To signal that that kind of thinking has no place at the centre of political and economic power, the SNP has tabled an amendment to remove the notion that prime ministerial discretion should have effect in relation to maternity leave. Ministers, MPs—all of us—should feel secure in the knowledge that we work for an organisation where no guilt will be piled on us if we take time off for maternity or, in fact, for family reasons. We have to be clear that there is a need to look more broadly than this very narrow issue, that this long-awaited progress does not go far enough, and that the scope of the Bill is not great enough.

These things matter, not only because the arrangements put in place by this House for the UK Government are important for the proper operation of the Government, but because they act as a signpost to other companies and organisations in the UK as to what approach they are expected to take. We do not have to look far to see the issues out there. A survey of 20,000 women by Pregnant Then Screwed last summer found that 61% believed that their maternity leave was a factor in their redundancy decision. Given the example set by this House and the UK Government today, that is perhaps not surprising.

It is also unsurprising that the UK ranks poorly among OECD countries for how it deals with maternity. The UK has the second lowest-paying rate for maternity leave, with less than a third of gross average earnings replaced by maternity payments; despite lengthy maternity leave entitlements, full-rate equivalent paid maternity leave lasts just 12 weeks. That is why, as a statement of principle, we have tabled amendments that would extend Ministers’ maternity leave from six to 12 months.

Let me be clear that that does not mean that we support one rule for Ministers’ maternity leave and another for the general public; the amendments set out what the direction of travel must be for the whole workforce. I hope that as part of the preparation for the wider review that I talked about, including the broader area of parental support provision, the Government will look carefully at that and ensure that equalities impact assessments are carried out before this business returns—quickly—to the House, so that these things can be addressed in the round.

That should include an examination of the challenges facing Members in their constituencies and their legislative roles when they become new parents. It is interesting that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority this morning seemed to recognise that it, too, needs to look at that. When the Minister looks further, I urge her to look at the words of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, which said:

“The lack of formal maternity and parental leave for MPs is entirely out of step with wider society and gives the impression that the work of a Parliamentarian is not appropriate for those with caring responsibilities.”

That is the crux of the issue. It is completely unacceptable that this House and the UK Government have got to 2021 without putting in order their own arrangements for properly supporting maternity leave.

On the basis that we need to make progress on this issue today, the SNP is supportive of what the Minister has brought forward, but if the Bill is to pass largely as drafted, I will be keen to hear from her significant commitments to returning to this issue before the summer to correct some of the glaring omissions and the lack of principle, so that we can fix this issue and send the important messages that we must send beyond this place.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With a four-minute limit, I call Cherilyn Mackrory.

Ministerial and other Maternal Allowances Bill

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald [V]]

I beg to move amendment 3, in page 1, line 5, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

The intention of this amendment is to make paid maternity absence mandatory for qualifying Ministerial office-holders.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 15, in page 1, line 5, leave out “a person as”.

Amendment 16, in page 1, line 14, leave out “person” and insert “minister”.

Amendment 18, in page 1, line 14, leave out “person” and insert “woman”.

Amendment 17, in page 1, line 16, leave out “person” and insert “minister”

Amendment 19, in page 1, line 16, leave out “person” and insert “woman”.

Amendment 4, in page 2, line 1, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Clause 1 stand part.

Amendment 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 7, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Amendment 6, in clause 2, page 2, line 10, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Amendment 7, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Amendment 1, in clause 2, page 2, line 20, at end insert—

‘(4A) Within three months of the passing of this Act, the Paymaster General must lay before both Houses of Parliament a draft of regulations to make provision for continuity of any paid maternity leave in the event of a Minister on Leave ceasing to hold the designated ministerial office whilst on maternity leave.”

This amendment would require the Paymaster General to act to ensure a commitment to continuity of provision of maternity pay which a Minister on Leave would be entitled to in the event of ceasing to hold the designated ministerial office whilst on maternity leave, or in the event of being moved to a position which results in monies being recouped.

Amendment 8, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, leave out “6-month period” and insert “12-month period”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Amendment 9, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, leave out “6 months” and insert “12 months”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity absence from 6 to 12 months.

Clause 2 stand part.

Clause 3 stand part.

Amendment 10, in clause 4, page 3, line 20, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

The intention of this amendment is to make paid maternity absence mandatory for qualifying Opposition office-holders in the House of Commons.

Amendment 11, in clause 4, page 3, line 22, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

The intention of this amendment is to make paid maternity absence mandatory for qualifying Opposition office-holders in the House of Lords

Amendment 12, in clause 4, page 3, line 24, leave out

“may be made only at a time”

and insert “must be made”.

The intention of this amendment is to make paid maternity absence mandatory for qualifying Opposition office-holders.

Amendment 13, in clause 4, page 3, line 32, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity cover from 6 to 12 months.

Amendment 14, in clause 4, page 3, line 38, leave out “6” and insert “12”.

The intention of this amendment is to extend the period of paid maternity cover from 6 to 12 months.

Clause 4 stand part.

Amendment 2, in clause 5, page 4, line 6, at end insert—

‘(2A) Within three months of the passing of this Act, the Paymaster General must lay before both Houses of Parliament a draft of regulations to make provision for continuity of any paid maternity allowance in the event of an Opposition office-holder ceasing to hold an opposition office whilst on maternity leave.”

This amendment would require the Paymaster General to act to ensure a commitment to continuity of provision of maternity cover which an Opposition office-holder would be entitled to in the event of ceasing to hold an opposition office whilst on maternity leave, or in the event of being moved to a position which results in monies being recouped.

Clause 5 stand part.

Clause 6 stand part.

Clause 7 stand part.

New clause 1—Equalities impact assessment—

‘(1) Within three months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Prime Minister must complete and lay before Parliament an equality impact assessment of the provisions of this Act.

(2) The equality impact assessment must include consideration of the implications of this Act for participation in public life.

(3) Within three months of the date on which the equality impact assessment is laid before Parliament, the Prime Minister must make an oral statement to the House of Commons on the action which the Government intends to take as a consequence of the assessment.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am pleased to move the amendments that stand in my name, and also to confirm my support for new clause 1 in the name of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and others.

In the time available to us—which, as I think has been acknowledged many times from those in all parts of the House, does not allow for full consideration of the Bill’s defects and omissions—it is important that the Committee sets out clearly what it believes the direction of travel should be on this issue. The general principle of the House addressing issues of maternity leave is important, although the devil will clearly be in the promised detail, and we will all be watching for the progress that has been discussed by so many Members.

As it stands, this halfway house of a Bill provides for maternity leave in specific circumstances, but as the Minister herself noted, only with the by-your-leave of the Prime Minister, and only for a maximum of six months. That is not really what we should be endorsing as a long-term solution to the present inadequate situation. Indeed, it should not even be a medium-term solution. That is why the SNP tabled these amendments, and why we are happy to support new clause 1 in addition.

It is inconceivable that if an equalities impact assessment had been done, the Bill would have seen the light of day in its current form. I look forward to such an assessment being completed before we return to this issue. As the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, we have barely scratched the surface of the issues that we need to address if policy is to deal with the proper engagement of those in public life with family life.

Amendment 2 was tabled because the approach adopted in the Bill is wrong. It is unhelpful to those of us who want to address the significant structural issues that exist. I know that there are many on the Government Benches who would like us to revise our approach, who see the international standards on human rights as inconvenient and who perhaps hanker after days when this House and the Government it supported decided who deserved which treatment or benefit and who did not. But we have moved beyond that, as is recognised in the European convention on human rights statement at the head of the Bill. As a matter of principle, we recognise that women should not be discriminated against in the workplace, including on the grounds of pregnancy or maternity.

The Bill, as drafted, envisages that the Prime Minister would—in theory—be entitled to withhold maternity leave from a woman even when she was within 12 weeks of the expected week of birth or within four weeks of having given birth. As a matter of principle, that is wrong. No appeal to how reasonable Prime Ministers would deal with this is satisfactory enough for us to accept such a defect in the Bill. The right to maternity leave is important because it shows the value that society places on our right to family life. That is more fundamental than the role we play in the workplace, no matter how important or exalted our role may be.

There is a macho view that seems to value the idea that we should all work right up until the days of giving birth, particularly if we are in high-powered jobs, and the understanding is that we should return just as quickly. That is to misunderstand the importance for most families—for parents and children—of that vital transitional period from pregnancy through to early parenthood. As one Member said earlier, it also misunderstands the colossal impact of pregnancy and parenthood on life more broadly. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said about the importance of supporting new parents in the early years, and this House has a role to play in setting an example.

While there may be mothers and families for whom a speedy period of maternity leave works, and they are entitled to choose that route if they wish, it is absolutely not our job here to put into place or to perpetuate policies that make that seem the norm. That can only be detrimental to families across the country. We really need to look forward. We need to accept that things are simply not good enough here for Ministers, MPs or, as we have heard, members of staff.

More broadly—this cannot be emphasised enough—we cannot leave this debate thinking that maternity leave is all working well away from this place. I mentioned earlier the terrifying statistic that over 60% of women who took part in the Pregnant Then Screwed survey last year believe that their redundancy is because of their maternity leave. That is a shocking statistic, and it should cause us to reflect seriously on the situation affecting these women.

The poor state of statutory pay must not be left behind in this discussion either. We cannot just deal with one person, however sensible it is to put this provision in place, and leave everyone else hanging on by their fingertips because of the impossible financial provisions that they have to deal with. The effect of that kind of financial pressure and the lack of support can be seen in how many women do not take up their full entitlement to maternity leave. In its recent report, “The impact of Covid-19 on maternity and parental leave”, the Petitions Committee noted:

“It appears then that current entitlements are only generous to those who can afford to use them.”

We should reflect on that point. Covid and the precarious nature of so many employment relationships at present bring into sharp focus the need for proper provisions for maternity leave, parental leave and the support that families need at this particularly difficult time, which will also be so vital as we move forward out of the pandemic.

The Petitions Committee also highlighted research commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2008, which suggested that less than a quarter—23%—of mothers taking maternity leave took the full 52 weeks. Only 45% took 40 weeks or more, and I suspect it is unlikely that the situation has improved significantly since then.

The reason for tabling amendment 3 is that an organisation of the scale of the UK Government should not add to that pressure by adopting a standard that says to women, “Your maternity leave is a benefit that may or may not be conferred by your boss,” who in this case is the Prime Minister. Through legislation, we should aim to reflect the standard that we expect Government to meet, which is that women are entitled to their maternity leave and organisations need to put in place proper mechanisms for supporting that.

On the wider front, this House needs to act on the continued abuse of pregnancy as an opportunity to disadvantage in the workplace, whether financially or even by removing people from their posts. That issue also affects those taking parental leave and those with family and caring responsibilities, particularly for young children, which Members on all sides have called on the Minister to look at.

That brings me to the second issue raised in the amendments tabled by the SNP, which is the duration of leave. A simple click on the gov.uk website would have told the drafters of the Bill that statutory maternity leave in the UK is 52 weeks, split into two chunks of 26 weeks. It is not clear to me why the starting point for the arrangements for designating a Minister on leave was taken to be six months instead of 12 months, and it does not speak well of what we are saying to the outside world.

Perhaps the only way to solve that mystery is to notice that there might be a pattern to the Government’s behaviour. In order to win support, they talk about the new freedoms that the UK apparently now enjoys, casting them as an opportunity to set our own standards, free from outside interference, and to set them standards higher. However, when a choice needs to be made as to whether to go for higher or lower standards, the instinct of the UK Government is to go low—to reduce standards, or to fail to act as they should.

That has been clearly shown by the dither and delay following the Government’s defeat in the High Court on the subject of personal protective equipment and health and safety protection for limb (b) workers. That growing part of our workforce, who find themselves with significantly fewer rights than their directly employed colleagues, now find that the Government are failing to act. Many of these precarious workers may find it even more challenging to deal with issues of maternity.

Those of us who are committed to maintaining high standards, whether in the field of employment, the environment or consumer rights, need to be on our guard here, or slowly but surely, hard-won protections we have enjoyed for many years will be reduced or swept away in pursuit of the so-called flexibility that we are now being told is what the UK needs as it pursues life beyond Brexit.

The amendments are about setting a marker. We can see, working from the most vulnerable members of our workforce right up to the Cabinet table, that change can be seen as an opportunity to roll back the clock and reduce and reset established rights. The Scottish National party does not consent to that process.

I will comment briefly on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. Her amendment 2 seems to offer appropriate clarification of an aspect of support for Opposition Members. It addresses the issue of someone being disadvantaged as a result of change in circumstance while on maternity leave, which strikes me as an important principle. While on maternity leave, we should not be concerned about the impact of changes at work, so I am happy to support that amendment. I ask the Minister to look at embedding the principle of no detriment in future action in this area.

There is no doubt that an equalities impact assessment is a vital way of dealing with some of the issues with the Bill. The recent Petitions Committee report that we have spoken about highlights some of the issues that need to be addressed when introducing reforms in this area. Recognising that the eyes of the country will be on the changes, we need to avoid creating a two-tier system. We cannot have a good system for Ministers and holders of other high-powered posts and a second-rate system for everyone else.

An equality impact assessment might have thrown up the need to address some of the wider issues in order to avoid that two-tier perception. It would also have highlighted that parental leave more broadly is vital to shattering the glass ceiling, and that too many barriers are still in place relating to caring responsibilities. When this Bill comes back, as the Minister has promised it will, it needs to address those issues.

If we had the equality impact assessment, we might also have noted that wider action is needed to increase the uptake of maternity leave to closer to the one-year statutory limit, because so many parents cannot afford to take the leave to which they are entitled. To address that gap between entitlement and uptake in the wider workforce, it is clear that maternity pay needs to increase, with the SNP proposing 100% of average weekly earnings for the first 12 weeks, then 90% or £150 for 40 weeks, whichever is lower.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]]

Let me briefly try to set the context in which these amendments are being considered. This is an issue that goes to trans and women’s rights. It is a year since I was elected as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT+ rights, which is the only LGBT rights APPG. While the title of the group is not meant to exclude the domestic LGBT rights agenda, it is a statement about where the focus should be, given our astonishing legal and societal progress for LGB people in the UK over the last two or so decades—progress of which I am a personal and fortunate beneficiary.

When I put it in the language of my first profession, the war on these issues had been won, and we were really in the business of rounding up the prisoners—tidying up. Much of that tidying related to the complexities generated by enabling trans people also to be able to enjoy the freedom to live their lives as they wished. The trans agenda understandably became the dominating issue for the British LGBT rights lobby in our civil society. By 2018, with the publication of the LGBT action plan and the consultation on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the direction of travel looked set fair for trans people to be able to enjoy those rights and live their lives as they wished.

However, to say that there has been a change of climate for trans people since my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, who is guiding this Bill through the House, lost her responsibilities for equalities is something of an understatement. There is going to be no change to the Gender Recognition Act; self-identification, which is the global gold standard for rights in this area, is going to have to wait; and gender identity services, now acknowledged to be grossly underfunded, with enormous demand on them, are now under well-funded legal assault as well.

We currently face a situation where trans people feel under a full-on attack, yet if one listened to their lordships who were making the case for this amendment, one would have thought it was the other way round. The proponent of these amendments said in the other place:

“We are currently faced with a full-on attack on women’s sex- based rights—a misogynistic and bullying campaign which seeks to diminish women’s rights in the name of the rights of trans people.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2021; Vol. 810, c. 962.]

I want to gently suggest that my noble Friend Lord Lucas turn the board around and see what the perspective is from the other side. The context is wild and exaggerated threats about the position of women’s rights from trans people. For example, his colleague in the other place, the noble Baroness Fox of Buckley, said:

“What is a threat to women is a particular brand of trans identity ideology. That does threaten women, but that is not the same as trans people.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2021; Vol. 810, c. 945.]

I look forward to hearing the explanation of that, because what trans people are seeing is The Times newspaper —the newspaper of record in the United Kingdom—carrying 250 stories of this kind, generally without satisfactory supporting evidence.

We have this amendment in a Bill that deals with the maternity leave arrangements of one woman who happens to be the Attorney General. A debate in this House and the other place suddenly came out of nowhere, generating the most extraordinary amount of interest and passion for an entirely technical correction of an anomaly in ministerial maternity leave arrangements. Sitting behind the passion engaged on this are agendas, which are in public for those who are taking an interest—principally the trans community—of the Heritage Foundation and the LGB Alliance, which, if one examines its followers on Twitter, does not seem to have a huge wider interest in the subject of LGBT rights. They are hearing an agenda being used, which we heard only yesterday from Donald Trump in his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, exploiting the issue of a potential threat to women’s sports, which need to be rescued from this threat. We know that, under the Equality Act 2010 in the United Kingdom, it is for sports administrators to make reasonable decisions to protect the integrity of their sports. These threats, in reality, do not exist.

What I want to say to trans people and their supporters is that today is not the ground on which we should stand. An innocuous sounding amendment in a tiny, technical Bill aimed at resolving the Attorney General’s maternity leave is not the place to have the fight around the principle. But there is a principle engaged here about gender-neutral language, and we have work to do to make it clear that trans rights do not come at the expense of women’s rights. We can perfectly well have both. Women’s rights must be protected, and reasonable provision must be made to protect women from threats that are real and evident. In reality, trans women pose no threat to women, but we do have those issues to address.

I therefore support the Government in accommodating this amendment, which has, to a degree, been forced upon them. But this necessary compromise must not undermine the position of the Government and what I believe to be the decent, caring majority in both Houses of Parliament who want to see trans rights properly established.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]]

I am mindful that the Bill is in front of us today because the Attorney General is about to have a baby, and I wish her and her family all the best. Maternity leave is a right—it should not be a discretionary benefit—and that should no different for Ministers or MPs. More broadly, though, we are not in the best place on maternity either in this House or, more importantly, outside it. Many of us have spoken at length about the issues that the Bill does not tackle but ought to. None of that has anything particularly to do with the Attorney General’s leave, so I would not suggest putting any barrier in the way of that, but it is my firm intention to secure from the Minister some clear commitments as to what she will do next.

It is absolutely right, and not before time, that Ministers are able to go on maternity leave. Despite the protestations from those on the Government Benches when we discussed this before, I still think it is unacceptable that the Prime Minister of the day is the ultimate arbiter of whether this can actually happen. I have said it before and I say it again: it should never be necessary for women to seek the potentially grudging consent of a boss to take maternity leave. If it is beyond our wit in 2021 to find a more satisfactory way of dealing with things like that, it is a poor show.

That is because what we do here and what we do with this makes a difference to how other people deal with their maternity leave, be they MPs, where the status quo is not much use, either to MPs or to their constituents; our staff, and perhaps the Minister can say something about what changes could be made to Short money to support proper maternity provisions for staff members; or all the people outside the political world, who are just trying to get by and will rightly wonder why we can manage to press ahead with such haste in this situation—again, I am pleased to get this sorted for the Attorney General; it is right that we do that—but have not been able to make such progress, and at such speed that would make all the difference, for ordinary families.

The statistics from Pregnant Then Screwed say it all. Its survey of 20,000 women in July last year found, among other things, that 61% of women believe that their maternity leave was a factor in a redundancy decision, and self-employed women who have taken maternity leave in the last three years saw their Government support cut by a third, or even by two thirds, if they have taken two maternity leaves, compared with dads, who are not impacted at all financially by maternity leave.

Let me touch on the amendments to language that have emerged from the Lords. The Minister gave a pretty concerted defence of gender-neutral language previously, so I am interested to see the change of tack here, given that it is perfectly normal to draft in gender-neutral terms. I am not convinced that this change is either progress or progressive. That is relevant, first, because the Bill is far too narrow in scope and deals with only this one issue and, secondly, because our representation here is just not reflective of who we are more broadly; we are far less diverse as a political group than the people we represent, and the lack of proper provisions for maternity leave illustrate that well. The Bill, as far as it goes, only makes provision for maternity leave for birth mothers. It does not make provision for all the different types of leave we have talked about—parental leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, shared leave and so on. So I ask the Minister to reflect further on the fact that everyone should have access to decent parental leave, not just some new parents.

On that note, I would be grateful if the Minister could say exactly when she intends to come back to the House with concrete proposals to deal with all these other pressing issues, so that we can see improvements to maternity, paternity and parental leave provisions far more broadly. That is particularly important as we move beyond the lockdown phase of the pandemic and caring and work responsibilities need to work together, rather than against one another. For example, the right to request flexible working from the start of employment would help so many people, with women bearing the disproportionate burden of caring responsibilities being particularly in need of that kind of progress. That is often an issue post maternity leave.

While we are dealing with this one narrow Bill, we need to appreciate that the status quo is far from good enough. The UK has the second lowest payment rates for maternity leave of OECD countries, with less than a third of gross average earnings replaced by maternity payments. Despite lengthy maternity leave entitlements, full-rate equivalent paid maternity leave lasts for only 12 weeks and a maternity allowance of just £151.20, which is worth about half the national minimum wage for a full-time worker, is obviously completely unacceptable. The fact that that is increasing by a grand total of 77p a week in April is shockingly inadequate. The Minister has to recognise that. She also has to recognise that we really need legislation to expand eligibility for statutory maternity leave and pay for workers who still do not qualify, including people on insecure contracts such as agency workers or zero-hours contract workers.

Much needs to be done. We need action on those insecure workers, maternity leave, parental leave and paternity pay, and we need policies that take account of the different shapes of families and different kinds of support that will be necessary. All these matters have to be addressed with some urgency. I realise that they are not the specific issues in front of us today, but it all fits together into a lack of care and direction from the UK Government.

Although the SNP supports the Bill, there is no getting away from the fact that the UK ranks very poorly in terms of maternity provision, and the very particular narrow nature of the Bill does nothing to remedy that. In fact, it just demonstrates how archaic Westminster can be. It is worth reflecting that an independent Scotland could do so much better on maternity and parental leave—not just for Ministers, but for everyone.