Employment Rights Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 134, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff.

The aim of this amendment is simple but vital. It seeks to provide day one financial support for parents of children diagnosed with a serious or life-limiting illness. It would create a new statutory right for parents to take a period of paid leave from employment to care for their seriously ill child. This right would apply to parents of children aged between 29 days and 16 years old who are receiving or have received specified types of medical or palliative care. The duration of this leave, including rate of pay, would need to be set out in regulation.

This amendment is tabled in honour of a young boy named Hugh, who sadly lost his battle to rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer, at just six years old. His parents, Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis founded the charity It’s Never You to help support the parents of children who have been diagnosed with serious illnesses. They have been campaigning for three years to change the law and are here in the Gallery tonight to listen to this debate.

Throughout Hugh’s treatment, Ceri and Frances saw first hand the immense challenges faced by parents—not just the emotional and physical strain of caring for a seriously ill child but the severe financial pressures that come with it. Each year, around 4,000 families in the UK spend two months or more in hospital with their child, who is undergoing treatment for a life-threatening illness. These parents are being forced to make the impossible choice of earning a living or being by their child’s bedside. The current system is leaving these families unsupported at the most vulnerable moment in their lives. Many are selling their homes, their clothes and turning to crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe just to cover basic living costs, which can go against them in any application for universal credit.

At present, no parent is entitled to any financial support in the first 90 days of their child’s illness. After 90 days, they can apply for disability living allowance, which would help with the costs of caring for their sick child. But even then, successful DLA applications can take up to 20 weeks to be approved.

Of the families surveyed by It’s Never You, 90% believed that immediate financial support would have made a critical difference to the hardships they faced following their child’s diagnosis and treatment. This amendment seeks to build on important progress made through the 2023 Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act. Under this Act, parents of babies admitted to neonatal care within the first 28 days of life and who require a hospital stay of seven continuous days or more, are now entitled to up to 12 weeks of statutory leave with pay for those eligible. This leave is also in addition to existing maternity or paternity entitlements.

Regarding these recent legislative changes, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, remarked:

“No parent should have to choose between being with their vulnerable newborn or returning to work … We are giving parents peace of mind so they can focus on their family.”


Considering this statement, I would like to ask the Minister just one question. The Government clearly recognise that no parent should be forced to have to make such choices between their child’s health and employment. So why are they so reluctant to provide essential financial support to those vulnerable parents who are in equally devastating situations?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 77 on foster carers’ leave, and Amendments 78 and 79 on kinship carers’ leave. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on bringing them forward.

Both types of carers, as the noble Lord said in tabling his amendments, provide a huge service by allowing children to remain in loving family settings, and both types will be the subject of wider consideration in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. But today there is a need to ensure that the essential caring role they provide is acknowledged by making provision for them to have a right to leave, as do employees.

Foster carers at least receive fees and allowances, although a survey by The Fostering Network last year found that 32% of local authorities pay less than the national minimum allowance to their foster carers, and even those rates are out of date and fail to meet the costs of caring for a child. It is also essential that recognition be given to foster carers’ right to leave from work to enable them to respond to situations in the same way as birth parents are able to do.

There are over 150,000 children in kinship care in England, and yet there is a lack of understanding among the general public as to just what kinship care is and what it involves. It is any situation in which a child has been raised in the care of a friend or family member who is not their parent. The arrangement may be temporary, or it may be long term. Kinship carers need employment leave because they step up in times of crisis to provide love and care to children who may otherwise be sent to the care system—a situation that has often come about because of tragedy and/or trauma.

The period when the child moves in with a family can be difficult. They are likely to need a lot of support. Often, the carer has not planned to take on parenting responsibilities for one or more children, so they may have to spend time attending meetings with children’s services, being involved in court proceedings, finding a nursery or making arrangements with the child’s school and GP. Sometimes, children’s services place an expectation on kinship carers that they at least temporarily stop working, if they think it necessary to meet the needs of the child.

Whether the carer receives any local authority support, in a financial sense, in this situation is dependent on where the carer lives, the type of arrangement and whether the child is or was previously in the care system. More often than not, kinship carers become dependent on social security, which is simply not right or fair. Surveys by Family Rights Group have found that a third of working-age kinship carers are not in paid employment due to their caring responsibilities, and six in 10 kinship carers have to give up work or reduce their hours when the child comes to live with them.

The contrast between adoptive parents and foster carers is stark. Adopters are entitled to 52 weeks of leave and 39 weeks of pay to enable them to settle a child into their home. This is paid at 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, followed by a payment which currently stands at £184 a week for the next 33 weeks, and employers can usually reclaim almost all those costs. There is no equivalent employment leave entitlement or payment for kinship carers, but there should be. Amendment 78 would introduce significant steps towards that, because providing kinship carers with paid leave would provide families with financial security and lead to direct savings for the Treasury from kinship carers remaining in employment, reduced universal credit claims and greater tax revenues, not to mention wider social benefits from gains in children’s well-being and in GDP.

Foster carers and kinship carers do not simply provide a service to the children they look after: they provide a service to the Government by lessening the demands on children’s services and saving public expenditure. I very much hope that my noble friend will recognise this and give an assurance that she will bring forward a government amendment to right these very obvious wrongs around leave for foster carers and kinship carers, and recognise the vital service that they provide.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I appreciate what the Minister has said. If I heard him correctly, he said it would not be appropriate to introduce this leave without undertaking an assessment of how it would be applied. Will such an assessment be undertaken? I think it is important.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am very happy to write to my noble friend with more details. We will cover some of the issues on carer’s leave in the round later in my speech, but I thank him for his intervention.