Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Laura Pidcock and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: we need to engage with all the stakeholders in the consultation to ensure we get it right. I heed the calls of many hon. Members, especially the hon. Members for Lincoln (Karen Lee) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who have made such points in previous debates.

If the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran agrees to withdraw the amendment, I ask that she and other hon. Members work closely with officials and the Department to feed into the consultation, which will be held later this year to consider some of these points in more detail, including the period in which leave may be taken and how flexibly it may be taken. I am very sympathetic to a longer period, but I ask that we deal with it in that way.

[Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I echo the comments of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran. It is right that flexibility be given. Having listened to those comments, another consultation seems like a frustration. This is quite a simple ask. Grief can affect people in many different ways. It can manifest and culminate at different times for different people depending on their support network, what has happened to them and their child, and the delay of the trauma.

As noted in amendment 11, it is crucial that the parent or carer should not have to take those days concurrently, but could use them as they wished, in agreement with their manager. That is where we would achieve balance: the right would exist, but a manager would have to agree to those times.

When I was a team manager, one of my members of staff found out that her daughter had diabetes. We worked week by week on what the needs of the child were for getting to grips with that disease. That is where the balance could come. It is not too much of an imposition, just an ask for some flexibility.

Flexibility would undoubtedly be beneficial for the employer, because the employee would not just take a two-week block within two months of the trauma, after which they would be expected to return to work. The time could be used as a phased return, as has been mentioned, or stored up for when a particularly bad period arose, which would otherwise probably, and understandably, be taken as a sick day by that employee. I therefore think that this is a very reasonable amendment.

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[Laura Pidcock]

Forgive my ignorance—I have not been in the House that long. I cannot imagine anybody objecting to this provision, so I am not sure how not allowing it at this stage would scupper it at other stages. I ask that question humbly. Why would allowing it now make things difficult further along the line?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The difficulties would be in redrafting legislation and ensuring consideration of the needs of employers. There are issues with HMRC to do with how payments are made and the ability to look at a single day, rather than two single-week blocks or a two-week block. It makes things more complicated for both the provisions and the regulations. I go back to the point about employers—the Bill is a signal to employers, although I absolutely accept what the hon. Lady is saying. Would any reasonable employer giver their employee time off for a funeral? The answer has to be yes.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

Like everybody in the room, I was moved by the fine speech and impassioned words of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran. A family that includes one of my closest friends lost their daughter, sister, niece and granddaughter in the most horrific of circumstances only a couple of years ago. I spent a lot of time with them through that process. Their child was 30, and their grief was no different from how it would have been at any other point in that child’s life. I quite understand what the hon. Lady is saying.

I have children either side of the line: a 21-year-old and 20-year-old, and a 14-year-old and 10-year-old, so I can see it from both sides. If I look at my own children—I would never want to contemplate the circumstances—there is a slight difference in dependency; I feel more responsible for the ones under 18. The hon. Lady spoke about everyone in the room, and we were all moved by what she said, but it is not just everyone in the room we have to consider. It is sad to say, because these things are not about money, but we have to consider the taxpayer.

The hon. Member for North West Durham cited some interesting figures that I was not aware of, but on a raw calculation the amendment would increase the cost to the taxpayer five or sixfold—the cost would go from £2 million up to about £12 million. Despite the fact that the taxpayer is picking up the tab for the statutory pay, there is a cost to employers because they have to cover the time off for the person. That is £1.4 million or £1.5 million, and it would go up to £15 million. Members may well argue—I might well agree—that that is a drop in the ocean compared with the grief that might be mitigated by the changes, but the amendment would mean going back to the drawing board and talking to the Treasury. It would fundamentally and fatally stop the Bill in its tracks, and we might not have time to bring it forward again.

I say to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran that the Bill is a signal to employers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester said. That is key. The Bill does not do everything we would expect. I would expect any employer to give someone as much time off as they needed on full pay. That is what we have done in our business. With the Bill, we are trying to send a signal to the small minority of employers that are not compassionate, fair or understanding.

We have had a lot of engagement already with charities. None of them has said, “There should be no limit.” Some have suggested a slightly higher limit in certain circumstances, but no one has suggested having no limit, although we should not take that as read. That is an interesting point on some of the feedback we have had.

We have to consider employers in terms of cost and logistics. Members have understandably tabled a number of amendments. The hon. Member for North West Durham has tabled one on lifelong disability, and there are many different ways in which the legislation could be changed to improve it or to cover different circumstances. The amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester talks about children in full-time education. There are problems with the cut-off point and how the legislation would cater for that. The amendment would complicate the legislation.

I understand why Members have tabled the amendments, and I have a great deal of sympathy with many of them, but given the fragility and complexity of taking a private Member’s Bill through this House and the other place, I politely and respectfully ask them to withdraw their amendments so we can move the Bill forward.

[Laura Pidcock]

I just want to point out that the Library said in bold that these are “very crude” figures on the extension of age—otherwise it might not provide me with any research ever again. It has been pointed out before that not all those parents of children between nought and 40 would be in employment, so there would be some mitigation there. Perhaps an exercise can be done to work out on average how many people who die are of working age and have parents in the workforce, but that is not for now.

This strikes at the morality of the Bill. It has been mentioned that the Bill is about the tasks that need to be carried out after the death of a child or in that grieving period, but I agree with the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran—I do not want to sound like a broken record—that this is about the recognition of grief, not just tasks, although grief can be exacerbated and it can be more difficult to heal and recover if people are not able to do the tasks that are part of the journey to recovery. I also agree that a child never ceases to be a child in their parents’ eyes.

I want to make a political point in what has, so far, not been a very political Committee: it seems so hard to get such things through the Treasury. We are scrabbling around, arguing and making the case for a 60-year-old worker to have two weeks off if their child is 30, but it seems so easy for the Treasury to do other things at the stroke of a pen. That is not the fault of the Bill or necessarily of this Government, but it seems that the system values some things much more than others, including employment rights.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good case for why the circumstances he describes are different from most others. However, consistency is important from an employer’s perspective and certainly from a legislative perspective. Of course, grief cannot be measured in pound notes, but part of our responsibility when introducing legislation is measuring the cost. His amendment would mean our having to revisit the cost and impact for the taxpayer and the employer.

The hon. Gentleman put his case well. The proposal in the Bill is, in any case, a minimum signal; we would expect an employer to be just as sympathetic to someone in this situation in their first 26 weeks of employment as afterwards. We would expect employers to be sympathetic, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to be sympathetic to the most important task, which is getting the Bill through the House.

[Laura Pidcock]

I want to echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Glasgow East and probe a bit further on this issue. I am obviously not going to talk about the Taylor review, but we want to think about day one rights. I am still not clear who will qualify for what. Were the amendment agreed, it would provide an exceptional right that could not be applied to other bits of legislation. I completely understand why holiday has to be accrued, but the provision is exceptional.

To ground the Committee, the right would apply to such a small amount of people in the grand scale of the population. It seems morally absurd that someone employed for 24 weeks, 18 weeks or even four weeks could not qualify. No one plans for their child to die. People take a job in the good faith that they can do that job. It would be remiss of us not to include the amendment. That is my feeling.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentlemen’s submissions and the opportunity to debate this matter fully. As drafted, the Bill allows the rate of parental bereavement pay to be set in regulations at a fixed or earnings-related weekly rate. This secures the flexibility to change or increase the rate of pay in the future. Of course, the main aim of the Bill is to ensure that bereaved parents who need time away from work are able to take that time without fear of suffering detriment from their employer as a result. A survey has shown that businesses that responded already provide bereavement leave and most of these companies offer more generous terms than we are stipulating in this Bill, as we have said a number of times before.

As I was asked before, I will not revisit all the arguments I made before about trying to move this Bill forward as much as we can in its original form, to prevent the need for us to go back and revisit some of the calculations that inevitably have to be made to determine effects on the taxpayer and employers, which clearly are important considerations. In the interest of consistency and cost, and also continuity, in that we would like this Bill to continue its progress through this Committee and through the other stages that it needs to go through, to get through the House as quickly as possible, I politely and respectfully ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

[Laura Pidcock]

I shall be brief. I probably will not speak again, so I want to place on record again my thanks to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton for this Bill and the passion and discipline that has been shown to try to get it through Parliament. I agree that something is better than nothing—for those in the grieving period, £148.98 is definitely better than £0 in a week—but I want to place on record that we must acknowledge that for the lowest paid, taking that time, just like going on to statutory maternity pay, has a financial impact and that exacerbates the difficult situation people may already be in. We also have to acknowledge that in the worst case situation, some people might not actually take that entitlement at all, because they could not afford the impact on their pay in that week. We have to acknowledge that, however brilliant the premise and skeleton of this is, it will exclude some people on the lowest pay for financial reasons.

Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Laura Pidcock and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We all want to see this legislation on the statute books. To borrow a phrase I heard the Minister use, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. We need to get this legislation through, so I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

This is not only an enabling framework piece of legislation, but a signal to employers. It gives the minimum possible standard that employers should give to their employees. I am an employer outside this place—as well as inside it, as we all are. I am sure if one our team members suffered a tragedy such as this—whether they were a grandparent, a brother, an uncle, or, obviously, a parent—we would all be considerate and give time off. I imagine we would give time off at full pay, rather than statutory pay. That is what we expect.

Today we are setting the signal and framework, not just in the legislation but for employers to recognise the terrible tragedies and the impact on their workforce. I do not want to agree to amendments at this stage because of issues around timing and proper consideration. We could end up in ping-pong with the other place, with redrafting and other ideas about the definition of a parent, which would take time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury made some very good points about examples of parents—biological parents, step-parents by virtue of marriage or civil partnership, the mother or father at the time of birth, and adoptive parents. It is absolutely right to consider all of those. The concern would be about who we are missing, as that is probably not an exhaustive list. We need to consider this properly.

I have often heard the hon. Member for Swansea East speak with passion about these issues. I accept many of her arguments, such as including a person with parental responsibility or a foster parent. It is absolutely right that we should consider those. I have those same concerns but I am also concerned to ensure that the legislation gets through in good shape and good time, and that we have a parallel process for consultation on the definition of a parent in order to get it absolutely right.

I would be in favour of widening that as much as possible but we clearly need to have consideration for employers as well, to ensure that we get this right. I know that the Minister has officials from his Department looking at consultation on the definition of a qualifying parent. It is important to consider the outcome of that consultation. I am sure the Minister and his Department’s officials will do that. We will make sure that we properly consider these issues.

I encourage all Members to continue to input into the process to ensure that we get this right, without making a firm decision at this point. I hope my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Swansea East agree it is sensible not to press the amendments. To ensure we get this right, we will give it proper further consideration to ensure we have a proper, systemic approach to define accurately a parent in this regard.

[Laura Pidcock]

The anxiety with which hon. Members want the Bill to go through is almost palpable. There is twitching, nudging and a few sweat beads in case any of us might wreck it. Of course I understand that and would not want to be the person who—two weeks into a job—ruins the Bill. However, it is imperative that we question the Government and the Bill’s promoter, because all the time, we are saying, “That can come later; that can be considered later,” but that is not an assurance or a warm signal to people who are in precarious work, are foster carers or are not directly mentioned in the Bill. The Bill is to be celebrated, but it leaves lots of people out. I come back to the point that was very helpfully—