Covid-19: Maternity and Parental Leave

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in such an important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the 337 people from my constituency of York Central who signed the petition, which aims to make things right for parents.

I want to put on the record how important it is to support women through their pregnancies. Will the Minister raise with colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care how essential it is that birthing partners and fathers are able to accompany the woman from pregnancy to birth—antenatal care, scans and hospital appointments—and for any care required after birth?

I will touch on two key issues. First, I thank the Petitions Committee for its report and its 23 recommendations, on which I want to reflect in the little time that I have. A constituent has written to me about neonatal care. She is a mother who gave birth 11 weeks early during the pandemic. That is so difficult, not least when her baby was moved to Middlesbrough, which is now in lockdown. She and her family need to be able to spend appropriate time to nurture and be with their baby. Bringing forward neonatal leave by two years would really assist her in that, and doing so now would help her even more. In the same way that the Government have moved at lightspeed to bring in so many measures during the pandemic, I ask that they bring in this important measure to support families in their time of need—April 2023 is too late.

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adoption and permanence, the second issue I want to look at is the current inequality between adoptive parents and birth parents. Will the Minister take another look at that inequality, not least in the Government’s response to the Petitions Committee report? We know, for instance, that self-employed adoptive parents are not entitled to an equivalent to the maternity allowance that self-employed mothers can access. They can ask the local authority for support, but they may not get it, and it is means-tested, unlike for birth parents. The 2016 independent review of self-employment in the UK highlighted that disadvantage, yet four years on, there has been no redress. I ask the Government: why?

Special guardians are currently not entitled to any form of parental leave or pay, yet they fulfil a crucial parental role. That creates real inequality: research shows that around half of kinship carers have to give up work to care for their children. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who last week published an excellent report about the real hardship that kinship parents face. We need to see real change. Labour would have introduced a year of maternity pay and leave, following best practice, and we need to get that right for all parents.

I urge the Minister to bring forward proposals to ensure that there is no inequality between adopters and special guardians, and birth parents. For many of those parents, bonding with their child and addressing the issues of attachment are so important if their families are to succeed and thrive in future. Despite their response, I ask the Government to revisit those issues to ensure that we can create strong families in future.

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[Paul Scully]

As I say, it is the overall aspect of the right balance, in terms of maternity leave, between the time and the money that we believe is both generous and fair—getting that right balance as a day one right.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North talked about what we are doing to look forward with care in the early years. The Prime Minister has asked my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) to carry out a review on how to improve health outcomes for babies and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. That review will focus on the first 1,001 days of a baby’s life, from birth to age two and a half. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North says that she is on that committee, which is fantastic. I am looking forward to seeing what comes of that and what recommendations come forward.

On social groups for babies and children, I know how important baby and toddler groups are to new parents and babies, and how distressing it has been for parents to suffer through lockdown. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about GPs and what they can and cannot do in terms of health visits. There is a contractual requirement from 1 April 2020 for GPs to offer maternal post-natal consultation at six to eight weeks after birth—live and stillbirth—as an additional appointment to the baby check in the first six to eight weeks. The Government gave an additional £12 million, invested through the GP contract, to support all practices to deliver that.

On mental health, clearly this is a concerning time for mothers. It is important, as we talk about giving mental health parity with physical health, that we are committed to supporting everyone’s mental wellbeing, especially during this unprecedented period. New parents can continue to access mental health services, including virtually, and the Department of Health and Social Care has released more tailored guidance to help people to deal with the outbreak.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not, because I have literally only a minute left and I want the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North to be able to respond.

There is no way I can talk about all hon. Members’ comments in the minute that I have left, but as I said in my response to the core of the petition, the Government believe that the entitlement to 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance is already very generous. I should perhaps add that those entitlements are provided to enable pregnant women and new mothers to prepare for and recover from birth and bond with their child.

We need to make sure that as we relax lockdown, there are new opportunities for new parents to spend their maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave in the way that they envisaged prior to the pandemic. The recent relaxations have been possible only because we took the difficult decision to introduce stringent social distancing measures, including lockdown. In fact, as we are now learning, we still need to be vigilant at maintaining social distancing, to protect lives.

In conclusion, may I thank the petitioners? We will continue to work on those first early years, to ensure that parents and children can get the support that they want.