Paternity Leave and Pay

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I have spent the last 13 years advising women, in particular, in employment tribunals, and I have advised a lot of women who have suffered maternity discrimination. That was an absolute mainstay of my practice. My comments will be completely heteronormative; that is not to disparage any other family structures.

During the pandemic, for the first time large numbers of women and men were able to work from home. I say that because prior to the pandemic I spent a lot of time advising women on flexible working requests. If they asked to work from home for one or perhaps two days a week, that was habitually turned down. They were told that it was completely impossible; employers would not hear of it. Once men did it, it became absolutely acceptable, and it is now absolutely fine in most organisations for parents of either gender to work from home for one or two days a week.

If women continue to take the overwhelming majority of parental leave, they will continue to take the entire career burden and will be systematically discriminated against for it. This is a widespread issue: 54,000 women a year lose their jobs when they are pregnant or on maternity leave.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

We also have to think about all the women who do not have children but are discriminated against anyway because employers expect them to. Does my hon. Friend agree that to get paternity leave right, we have to ensure that everyone in their 30s and 40s is equally discriminated against because they might go off and have children?

[Mrs Russell]

I completely recognise what my hon. Friend says. The risk zone for women’s careers starts when they are approximately 25 and carries on until they are at least 45. I have been advised not to wear my wedding ring to interviews because I was likely to be viewed as a pregnancy risk. Until we deal with that—until men take significant amounts of leave and are paid properly to do it—we will continue to face this issue, and women will be systematically discriminated against, as she says, whether they have children or not.

Approximately 12% of employers disclosed in a YouGov poll that they were reluctant to hire a woman simply because she might become pregnant. This is a widespread issue, whether women have children or not. We need non-transferable, “use it or lose it” parental leave for the second parent and we must ensure that that is paid at a rate such that people are actually able to take the leave. Once we have that and it becomes the default minimum—some fathers will choose to take significantly longer—everyone will be a risk, and everyone will be able to have career development. That will change the entire attitude towards maternity leave in our society. As I said, 54,000 women a year lose their jobs when pregnant or on maternity leave. All the women I advised thought they were just individually unlucky but given the volume of them I can say that they were not unlucky—it was systematic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing this long-overdue debate. Previous debates have had a minimal turnout, so it is fantastic to see so many people here. I also pay tribute to the Dad Shift and the original campaigners Pregnant Then Screwed and Joeli Brearley.

Joeli Brearley came up with the pancake test: if we consistently put mums and dads in two different boxes, with mums looking after babies and dads having to go back to work after those first two weeks, when you have just realised that the meconium will eventually stop, it is mums who learn how to feed the child pancakes and dads who do not. It is mums who will get why some days the child wants pancakes rolled up, some days they want them flat and some days they want them with cream. That everyday caring for children is at the heart of being able to look after them, and slowly but surely it ends up being easier for the mum to take the child and to deal with the toddler, and dads get further and further away.

That is why, in the minute I have left, I want to argue in front of the Minister for PaPa—protected and paid leave—which we need for mums and dads in every single relationship. There is a risk that the Employment Rights Bill and the brilliant changes it introduces could entrench the challenges we are discussing, rather than helping us to resolve them. What do I mean by that? I mean that, if we entrench the idea that shared parental leave is the answer to the challenge, we are entrenching one of the biggest crimes against relationships. As the data shows us time and again, it is mums who end up having to look after children and mums who end up having to take that link. That is why in this country there is a motherhood penalty, which means that mums are seen as less committed, less capable, less competent and less worthy of promotion.

[Mrs Russell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the idea that “part-timer” is a term of abuse is a shocking concept, and that what we are discussing today could help with that?

[Ms Creasy]

I completely agree. I was also shocked to hear Conservative Members, who obviously are not in this Chamber today, talking about flexible working as somehow lesser working. When people work flexibly, they do not work less—that is why they end up sending emails in the evening, because they are prioritising their time to do bedtime. They make it work for their family.

This debate is about making things work for families and tackling the inequalities in the workplace. Those inequalities are why we have a gender pay gap in this country—though in fact it is not a gender pay gap, but a motherhood pay gap. There is also a fatherhood premium, but we are showing in this debate that it is not a premium at all, because asking dads to work harder and longer and to be away from their children is not what modern dads want. That is why so many fathers look at flexibility in the workplace when they take on jobs, and that is why this debate matters.

If we want to support every family, it cannot just be the wealthiest who can set the terms on when they get to see their kids and make those pancakes. I therefore urge the Minister to consider an amendment that many of us will be tabling relating to PaPa for dads in their own right, because that will help every member of the family. I said it in the main Chamber, and I will say it again here: having PaPa is good for us, because our economic competitors are doing it, and we have some of the worst rates of paternity leave. It is also good because we can prevent another generation of dads reaching the stage of having teenagers who they have no relationship with, because they have not been there—not just to make pancakes, but to be the best dad they want to be.

Whistleblowing Protections

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank all those who have spoken before me in such an informative manner and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing the debate.

I have advised numerous whistleblowers throughout my career. Some themes emerge from the experience that speak directly to the points raised by a couple of previous speakers about the impact on whistleblowers when they realise there is something seriously wrong in their organisation and they speak up about it. I have found, particularly in the NHS, that there is an institutional reluctance—and I think I can understand it. I think it is psychologically extremely difficult for people to accept that their department might be systematically failing or sometimes actively damaging patients, and the result is that they tend to turn on the person blowing the whistle and to ostracise them. What follows is an investigation into that person’s behaviour or conduct as relationships deteriorate, and often then a dismissal under the term “some other substantial reason”.

There are five potentially lawful reasons for dismissal, including misconduct, incapability and so forth. One is “some other substantial reason” for dismissal. That phrase is really a catchall for, “There is some sort of decent reason for sacking this person”, but the case law has developed in such a way that “some other substantial reason” for dismissal can just be an absolute breakdown of relationships between people who work together—and that is almost always the case where there is a whistleblower. The result is that we have a massive gap in our law, whereby people who have blown the whistle are systematically being dismissed for “some other substantial reason”.

One of the most effective things we could do within the scope of the current system would be to outlaw the use of “some other substantial reason” dismissals in a whistleblowing framework, so that if someone has blown the whistle, there cannot be a “some other substantial reason” dismissal. There would still be the ability to dismiss for misconduct if there has genuinely been misconduct, but in the situations I have seen, that has usually not been the case; it is just that people have fallen out.

I think there is scope to improve whistleblowing protections in the current system. We could do it through amendments to the Employment Rights Bill, which is making its way through the House. In the longer term—I appreciate that this is not currently fiscally viable—but we could look at extending legal aid to whistleblowers. We could extend to whistleblowers the legal aid protection available to people on low incomes for discrimination claims; that would be in the public interest and would nicely back up the duty of candour that we have been talking about introducing. We could also look at whether the suggestions being made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central could be linked to the fair work agency, and whether we could in due course extend the powers of that agency to examine this issue.

It is a terrible thing to advise whistleblowers, because they are so distressed—certainly one of the most distressed client groups I have ever come across. Whistleblowing is typically completely career-ending for them, and the results for many are terrible. We should look at whether our unfair dismissal legislation is well placed to handle such matters. I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central for raising this topic for debate.