Carer’s Leave Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Friday 3rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on his choice of subject and the excellent speech he made in support of it, to which I will add a brief footnote to demonstrate the support from my side of the House for his Bill, but also to focus on its application to young carers. Having spent much of the week listening to the noble Lord making critical comments about pieces of legislation, it was a refreshing change to hear him speak so positively about this one, and I congratulate him on getting a clear round from the Delegated Powers Committee.

Last month, the ONS published the second phase of data relating to unpaid care from the 2021 census, and the Carers Trust, to which I am grateful for its briefing, has produced an interesting note on what those census figures mean in relation to young carers and young adult carers. The headline was that the 2021 census figures showed a significant decrease in the number of young carers and young adult carers identified through the census, compared with 2011. I happen to believe that there are a number of reasons why those figures underrepresent the number of young carers, but there was a significant increase in the proportion of children and young adults providing significant levels of care, with over 140,000 young carers and young adult carers caring for more than 20 hours a week. Astonishingly, there are still close to 50,000 children and young adults providing more than 50 hours of care a week—the equivalent of a full-time job—which in many cases they have to reconcile with their commitments to education. The data also highlighted how young carers and young adult carers in England and Wales were more likely to be living in areas of high deprivation compared with their peers without caring responsibilities, and there is a message there for the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

While many of these young carers are still at school or college, a significant number are working and they struggle to balance caring with paid work. In the latest survey by the Carers Trust, 45% of young carers and young adult carers said that they were “always” or “usually” struggling to balance caring with paid work. Fewer than half of young carers and young adult carers said that they either “always” or “usually” get help from work to balance caring in their life.

By providing unpaid carers with a legal right to request additional leave because of their caring responsibilities, the noble Lord’s Bill will help reduce the need for carers to use annual leave or to give up work entirely because of their caring responsibilities, such as medical appointments or recovery from procedures.

One of the additional benefits of the noble Lord’s Bill is that it should lead to increased awareness about the needs of unpaid carers and should ensure that all employers have processes to identify unpaid carers from the point of application and also record which staff have caring responsibilities. It also has the potential to normalise conversations in the workplace about caring. This is something which will particularly benefit young adult carers, who say that they find it difficult to identify themselves as unpaid carers to their employers. I am interested in the final section of Part 1 of the noble Lord’s Bill, which provides a bit of a stick in that employers could be liable to pay compensation if they ignore the obligations in the Bill.

Finally, I support the Bill. I look forward to other speeches, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, who has been campaigning on this issue for as long as I have known her, which I suspect is even longer than the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has. I support this legislation.