Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill

Debate between Robert Courts and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

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

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I commend those who have brought this Bill forward and those who have suffered personal loss. Among the friends of mine who have suffered such a loss, the line has always been, “It’s just wrong to have to bury a child; nature didn’t intend it that way.” Therefore, regardless of whether we are 80 years old and burying a child or 30 and burying a young infant, it is the wrong way around and the effects cannot be overestimated, so we must offer support in all cases.

[Robert Courts]

My hon. Friend powerfully makes the very point I want to make. For any human being, burying a child is profoundly distressing, as it goes against our very nature as humans. We therefore should not even countenance saying that people should not be able to avail themselves of assistance just because their child is older; that would go against what we are trying to achieve.

While that is my wish, however, I listened carefully to the interventions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, and my overriding desire is that this legislation gets on to the statute book. If it just sets a minimum level, we do not have to say that that is it, the story is closed and we can never amend it again. We can come back to it: we can either amend this legislation through regulations or come back and debate it again, and campaign, as we are so used to doing, to ensure that we provide a higher standard. I would not like any changes to be made now that mean either the Government are unable to support the Bill or employers feel that it is too onerous on them, and as a result we do not have these much-needed protections. It must be our foremost concern today to put these protections in place.

The last group on which I want to comment is those that address notice periods: amendments, 9, 10, 11, 15 and 17. I think that an element of practicality is intended here, and I would certainly not wish to see anything in this Bill that requires people, at a time of profound distress, when their world has been turned upside down and they cannot think straight, to have to worry about filling in forms or jumping through hoops or having to comply with something, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said, might mean they inadvertently fall foul of a regulation.

We are seeking to provide legislation that is compassionate and sensitive. The requirement for any notice period to be given must be very light touch and amount to nothing more than people simply telling the employer that this tragedy has occurred and they would like to go off for a certain period. That is reasonable to enable the employer to provide some cover for the job they are undertaking at that time, but I certainly would not want to see requirements put in place—perhaps involving training—and people having to worry about whether they have complied with them. That would be running completely counter to what we are trying to achieve here.