Carer's Leave Bill

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Wendy Chamberlain

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.