Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 11th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to be able to speak in this debate and to follow the moving contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and many other Members.

I thank the many Members on both sides of the House who have supported the Bill and worked so hard to bring it to where it is today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for driving the Bill this far and my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for his work on his ten-minute rule Bill in the previous Parliament, which I was very proud to co-sponsor. I am delighted to see that Bill’s important measures included in this Bill, which I hope the House will endorse this afternoon.

Before I was elected to Parliament, I was a trustee and treasurer of a small bereavement counselling charity in the midlands. Our counsellors worked very closely with people from all backgrounds who had lost loved ones, including a large number of bereaved parents. They had lost children to illness, to accident and, in one case, to the Lockerbie bombing. The emotions and experiences of parents in such circumstances are wide-ranging and completely individual to each specific parent, regardless of what happened. For some, the early emotions were anger. There was despair and in some cases even a sense of guilt about what could and could not have been done differently, even when it was clear that nothing that they could have done would possibly have made any difference.

All bereavements cause grief. The loss of a loved one leaves a sense of emptiness and places strains on mental health. However, when someone loses their own child, it is particularly devastating, as a number of hon. Members have said, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) in particular. It is completely the wrong order—it is not the natural way things should be. That does make such losses particularly damaging and painful. Children should not die before their family.

From the moment when a person learns that they are going to be a parent, their life and the way in which they see the world changes. They start to plan for what the future will bring for their children, and when those children’s lives are taken away, of course it has a huge impact on them. The whole world as they know it can be changed in quite literally a heartbeat. While all these losses are hugely and unimaginably painful, sometimes it can almost be even worse for the parents who lose a sick or disabled child. They may feel that they somehow get less support and sympathy from the community. They may almost feel as though people are suggesting that it is somehow for the best whereas, of course, this is their son or daughter who they will never see again.

It is absolutely vital that we do anything we can as a Parliament—as lawmakers—to make the process even the slightest bit easier at a time when people are experiencing particularly horrendous and acute pain. The pain does not go away, but of course there are times when it is particularly sharp. It is then that people should be allowed the time and space that they need to grieve in their own way and in their own time, because the impact on families can be terrible. There is often a very deep marital strain. The tragedy of losing a child can be compounded by the further tragedy of family break-up, so we need to allow parents the time to grieve together. If the Bill allows that, at a time when people are ready to grieve—it may not be in the week or two immediately after a child’s death—it will achieve a great thing.

A number of the details will be dealt with in the regulations on which the Government are consulting. I hope that all those with views on the how, what, when and who will submit their views to the Government’s consultation, and I also hope that the Government will interpret the definition of a parent broadly. The Bill says that the regulations may interpret that either wholly or in part on the grounds of caring responsibilities. That is clearly the logical way of interpreting who is a parent.

This is a necessary and important Bill but, more than that, it is the right thing to do. The sooner that we can get these measures on the statute book, the sooner they can start to make a little bit of difference to parents at a time when they need it most.