Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, for the second time today, it is a pleasure to support a Bill. I am only sorry that my noble friend Lady Chapman is not here to hear me make the second most enthusiastic speech that I have ever made in your Lordships’ House. It is a particular pleasure to do so as we approach International Women’s Day next week. Noble Lords will be aware of an analysis published by the World Economic Forum which found that the pandemic has slowed the global trend towards gender equality by more than three decades. In that context, this Bill will make a real contribution towards a more equitable working environment for women in this country.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, not only on sponsoring the Bill but on making, if I may say so, a profoundly convincing case for it. It was a speech that only a working mother could make, all the more powerful in being made by a Member of your Lordships’ House who has been at the very centre of government in this country. She reminded us that the genesis of the Bill can, in part, be traced back to 2015, and research commissioned by the Cameron Government. She shared some of the findings of that and other research. That research found that, disturbingly, 77% of mothers surveyed had faced some form of discrimination or disadvantage during pregnancy or maternity leave, or when returning to work from maternity leave. More worrying still was the attitude of the employers surveyed. Despite years of equality legislation and attempts to change people’s attitudes, some 70% said they felt a woman should reveal if she were pregnant during the recruitment process and, more egregiously, 25% felt that they were entitled to ask a woman about her plans to have children in future. As we have heard, more recent work undertaken to assess the impact of the pandemic on expectant mothers at work suggests that a quarter had experienced unfair treatment, with this being significantly more probable at the lowest end of the income scale.

In the Second Reading of the Bill in the other place, the Bill’s sponsor invoked the redundancy protection model in Germany—and indeed this same model was commended by the Women and Equalities Select Committee in 2016 when reporting on this same issue. Although a straightforward transposition of the German model into UK legislation is impossible, the Bill as it stands comes as close to extending those same protections into UK law as is possible, while taking into account the divergences between the two countries. I am bound to say that those divergences are significantly to our disadvantage.

As it happens, I have friends in Munich with young children, and, in the margins of the Munich Security Conference, which I attended a couple of weeks ago, I visited them. It is astonishing the degree to which they, their employers and the whole environment benefits extraordinarily from the German attitude to the support of families with children. It is not the only aspect of German employment policy that we could learn from, but we should learn more from it because it is consistent not only with a positive attitude to children, and their growth and development, but with a successful industrial economy in the modern global world.

This legislation will strengthen the Equality Act 2010, which already prohibits discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy and prevents employers laying off new mothers by extending redundancy protections to six months. I shall not labour this point, because it is directly analogous to something that I addressed at greater length in my remarks in the debate immediately preceding this one. However, it is frustrating that repeated commitments from the Government to introduce an employment Bill, of which these provisions were to be part, have failed to materialise. Each year there are somewhere in the region of half a million pregnant women in the workplace. This is not, therefore, a peripheral issue or something artificially amplified by sections of our community but something which will, in some form, affect all of us. Given that we have been promised action on this since 2016, with an employment Bill eventually being included in the 2019 Queen’s Speech before Covid derailed the legislative programme, why has it taken seven years, pricked by the spur of a Private Member’s Bill, for the Government to consent to act on this issue?

My hope and expectation is that the Bill will have universal support as it passes through your Lordships’ House. I do not wish to take up time that could otherwise be filled by the expression of full-throated support by other noble Lords, but I would like to mention the issue of employment tribunals. The Bill today, and the consequent regulations to be made by the Minister, will not apply a comprehensive blanket ban on making a pregnant woman or those on parental leave redundant, but it will markedly strengthen their chances of making a successful claim of unfair dismissal through the employment tribunal system. However, that system is, if not broken, at least hugely dysfunctional.

Figures released by the Ministry of Justice a few weeks ago show that it takes an average of 49 weeks for a case to be heard by a tribunal. It is a grim irony that, as it stands, the average wait for a new mother to receive justice would be longer than her pregnancy. It is worth emphasising that this is simply the time until the first hearing, which in many cases is only the start of an elongated process that is further bedevilled by delay. If the Government wish this Bill to be effective and to really protect pregnant women and new mothers, as I am sure they do, their first priority must be to bring down the tribunal backlog, currently at close to half a million cases. Simply citing the pressures of Covid is not good enough. Waiting times have been lengthening since tribunal fees were declared unlawful in 2017. When the Minister responds, I would be very grateful if this question could be addressed.

I close by commending once again the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for the thoroughness and care that she has displayed in bringing this Bill before your Lordships’ House today. She offers us a good opportunity to show your Lordships’ support for it to progress, I hope swiftly, into law.