Carer's Leave Bill

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 9th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. My party’s policy is to have paid leave, but the Bill is an important step, putting statutory rights to request leave on the statute book in for the first time. I hope that it is an initial step in doing much more to support carers in all their guises.

Before looking at the text of the Bill, I will briefly mention that it also benefits employers. As I outlined on Second Reading, I have had the pleasure of meeting several businesses that already have carer-friendly employment practices. The evidence that they shared made it clear that having such practices not only is the right thing to do but produces financial benefits through staff motivation and lower turnover. It is a win-win.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I welcome this private Member’s Bill and the Government’s support for it. Does the hon. Member agree that this is a timely Bill, particularly with more women going into the workplace? Women of my generation are very much the sandwich generation: we have elderly parents and children. Also, with medical advancements, more children are surviving disabilities that they might have died from earlier. That means that there is an increased pressure on families to provide care for children as they grow older.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I absolutely agree. There are so many different iterations of carers and who they are providing care to. I have certainly seen that myself. It is really important that the Government support the Bill, because that provides better recognition. We know that one of the UK’s productivity challenges is the number of people who are economically inactive, which has increased post covid. We also know that it tends to be older women, and if the Bill is an opportunity to help them to get them back into the workplace, that can only be positive.

The text of the Bill sets out in detail the legal framework for the entitlement. Large parts of it are very similar to other leave entitlements that are already in operation. That avoids adding complexity, both for employers and employees who will make use of carer’s leave. The main aspects of the entitlement are as follows: the Bill requires the Secretary of State to make regulations to entitle an employee to be absent from work in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. There will be no qualifying period, meaning that eligible employees will be able to make a request to take carer’s leave from the first day of their employment. A broad approach has been taken to defining the key terms of eligibility, a dependant and a long-term care need in order to ensure that eligibility is as open as possible, and can encompass the many different circumstances in which a dependant might need care.

I will pause on that element to highlight its importance, because a significant issue is simply getting carers to recognise themselves as such and, therefore, as entitled to support. As I said on Second Reading, my husband is a carer to his mother but would not recognise himself as a carer. Over half of carers take more than a year, and 36% take three years, to recognise themselves as such. As those are the proportions of carers who now see themselves as such, there is potentially an unsurveyed cohort that we do not know about. Making the definition as broad as possible is vital to start conversations, and to show people the different forms that care can take and, vitally, that support is available.

The Bill’s overall objective is to ensure that carer’s leave is available to those caring for someone with a significant and long-term care need, but flexibility and a light-touch administrative burden are fundamental features of the new entitlement. It will allow for a proportionate process to be put in place through regulations to enable employers to plan and manage absences arising from carer’s leave.

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[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye, who brought her personal experience to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife on the Bill and also reflect the same warmth and consensus that is felt when we all agree on something.

Leave for carers in employment is a hugely important part of the more comprehensive package that we need to provide for those providing care for loved ones. I want to briefly mention a group who are not in employment but whose employment opportunities are affected by their caring responsibilities. I do so as chair of the newly formed all-party parliamentary group on young carers and young adult carers. The 2011 census suggested that there are some 180,000 young carers in the UK, one in eight of whom are under the age of eight. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, as the numbers are estimated to be closer to 700,000 and, as has already been said, many of them do not recognise themselves as carers, not just for the same reasons as adult carers, but because it has been their entire life.

The Carers Trust estimates that one in 12 children and young people take on mid to high-level care for a family member. The average age is 12 and the average annual income for their families is £5,000 lower; 68% are bullied at school, with 26% have been bullied because of their caring role; 45% report having a mental health problem; they achieve nine grades lower at GCSE than their peers; and if they get into further or higher education, they are four times more likely to drop out. All of that clearly affects their life chances, employment opportunities and career prospects, but they receive very little mention in the adult social care White Paper.

[Nickie Aiken]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising the important issue of the pressure that young carers take on throughout their lives. When I was at the Children’s Society, I led work on a report on the life chances of people who had been young carers and it was shocking that their educational attainment was often non-existent, which often meant their employment possibilities were also non-existent. I hope that he will work with me, and I am more than happy to join his APPG, to ensure that young carers have a voice. They tend to be the silent children who just get on with things.

[The Chair]

Order. We are slightly out of scope at this point. I know the hon. Member for Sheffield Central knows that, and I have given him some room to put those important points on the record.