Employment Rights Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my support to this group, in particular to Amendment 76 in the name of my noble friend Lady Lister. I commend her illuminating and penetrating introduction. Indeed, all the speeches that we have heard set out a very strong case.

When I worked in an organisation, I had women colleagues whose partners could not afford to take even the leave they were entitled to, thus further burdening the tired mother and losing those irreplaceable bonding first days, to the detriment of both child and father, as many noble Lords have said. That bonding and support for the mother is just as important for adoptive fathers and stepfathers. Why should self-employed fathers be unequally treated? They are just as much fathers. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will carry out the review as set out in this amendment.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 127, 128 and 139 from my noble friend Lady Penn. I too am a father, so I have an interest in that regard. These amendments will be very useful to the poorest families in the country because currently, only the very well paid get access to serious paternal leave.

As someone who comes from a community that has suffered horribly from the absence of fathers, I know that an early intervention that ties a father emotionally, financially and in any other way to that family unit is very important. The impact it has on educational outcomes and the finances of the family into the future are hugely important. My community is more than three times more likely to be impacted by poverty and all the downsides that poverty inflicts because of that lack of an initial paternal connection to the family.

This country is also facing a very low birth rate. Many young men in this country will tell you that they cannot afford to have children. Paternity leave will be a big part of addressing that. So, supporting our birth rate in this country—addressing that demographic time bomb—is very important.

The mental health of men in this country has been poor for a very long time. Part of turning that around is improving how fatherhood is perceived, so that young men in particular lean into that role and take pride in being a father. That also has a strong knock-on effect for the women involved: they receive support in the home, and it helps them return to their own careers, as we have heard from so many Members of your Lordships’ House. In the poorest communities in this country, many of the real breadwinners in the household are the women. If they can be supported back to work, that will have a profound impact on the mental well-being of the entire family.

I have been on a personal journey to make this a day one right. Because of the profound effect that the lack of a father in the household has on many aspects of society, this should be a day one right. Basically, some things are just worth paying for, and if this has a cost to the Government, so be it, because the upsides, socially and financially, are massive and beyond measurement.

Lastly, as is well documented and as many noble Lords have already said, the benefits to companies are profound. The challenge will be the smaller companies, where one or two people form a significant proportion of the workforce. That is where this conversation has to be sold, where the rhetoric is important, because if smaller companies adopt this approach, I believe it will happen. Larger companies already know the benefits this has for their workforce.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Remnant (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend Lord Evans. In doing so, I feel that I am following modestly in a family tradition. I suspect that the noble Lord is not aware that my great-grandfather in the other place introduced successfully, but against much opposition, a Bill guaranteeing members of the police force one day of rest, off duty, in every week. Until that date some 115 years ago, the police had no such entitlement. This amendment is less momentous than that Bill, but it is a proportionate suggestion that gives suitable recognition to voluntary service and strengthens policing. It should also find ready acceptance with employers, who would be able to fulfil their civic duties while suffering minimal disruption.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. I want to come at it from a slightly different angle. This could be a vital piece to help the police with one of their weakest areas—representation in the community. I have been a youth worker for over 38 years now, and most of the most committed and professional people from my community already have employment so cannot join the police force, but they would love to be involved in representing our community in said police force to help the relationship between our community and the police force. This kind of initiative could be deeply helpful in allowing that to happen.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

We will support the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, if he pushes this to a vote, for a number of reasons, eloquently given by a number of speakers. It comes back to how we value people, whether they are volunteers, kinship people or carers, and where they sit in society. I listened to a couple of the speeches about the days of yore, when the policemen just wandered around the streets, cuffed young boys around the ear and sent them back to school. Those days are gone now, and these special constables are just as much at risk as any other police officer on duty. The people who are coming out and causing trouble, whether they are on drugs or whatever, have no idea, conception or care whether it is a real policeman or a special constable.

Why we are debating the right to time off and reasonable expense is beyond me. Certain things should be blindingly obvious, and this is one of them. Way back in the mid-1990s when I was vice-chair of the Greater Manchester Police Authority, some of the things I saw and heard about what happened to police officers did not always make the press. Special constables and community officers bring the cohesion and bring communities together, and the more that we can get that togetherness without vast expense to the police budget that the Government are trying to control, the better and more settled our society will be. It is a small price to pay for a lot of benefits for a lot of people.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mott (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 100 from my noble friend Lady Penn. I will be brief. The thing that struck me most about my noble friend Lord Harlech’s comments is that when I first returned to work after the birth of my first child, having taken two weeks’ paternity leave, I went back with a feeling of guilt. If this amendment does anything, it takes away that guilt that many new fathers feel after the birth of their first child and their return to work.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 100 from my noble friend Lady Penn. I want to focus on the societal and class element of this. I come from a community that has some of the poorest social outcomes in the whole of Europe. One of the features of my community is the lack of a father in the home. I have watched my community struggle for multiple generations with the reality of that—poor educational outcomes and lots of prison attendance by fathers and by children who are unattended. This is an opportunity to reverse many of the social challenges that we face, in one fell swoop. If the Government are serious about addressing child poverty and helping the poorest working communities in this country, levelling up paternal leave would be such a profound thing to do.

I have been a youth worker for over 38 years and one of the things that I ran was a single parent group with over 200 members. When you spoke to the young men involved, they all talked about a lack of connection to their family. If we can help to repair that, we can start to get into why our children fail so badly in school, why they spend so much time in prison and why their behaviour is so challenging in a school environment. The Government have a real opportunity to do this here. The economic impact of not doing this is significantly more than the tiny difference it will make economically to do it. This is a real opportunity for the Government to make a real impact for the poorest communities in this country. I beg that it happens.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend. In my view, these proposals are long overdue. When my children were born in the 1990s, paternity leave was not even part of the conversation. Much has changed but the statutory provision for paternity leave, currently just two weeks, still reflects a significant imbalance in the pursuit of gender equality. I am fortunate to work for the same employer— Marsh Ltd, the insurance broker—as I did at that time. It now offers 16 weeks’ paternity leave, to be taken within the first year after the child’s birth.

We have heard that the UK ranking in international standards is low. For many fathers, especially as household costs rise, taking time off is simply not financially viable, even if permitted. Better paternity leave benefits everyone: fathers; mothers; the child; the other children, if there are any; and, in the long term, the economy, as we have heard.

Although I recognise that the four months offered by my company may not be realistic for all, particularly SMEs, we must aim for a fair balance between the business realities and family needs. Research shows that around six weeks of leave is the point at which the broadest benefits are achieved, as proposed in Amendment 100. I believe that this is a reasonable balance and would make paternity leave viable for most fathers.