Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I did not plan to speak in this debate. I planned to come along and show my support for the Bill by sitting on the Front Bench, but the powerful debate has compelled me to add my voice and to pay tribute to everyone who has worked so hard to get the Bill to this stage. I will not detain the House too long other than to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for choosing this subject for his private Member’s Bill.

I have had a couple of opportunities to introduce a private Member’s Bill. One I was successful in enacting, and the other was sadly talked out by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who thankfully is not here today. That is probably why we are having so much consensus and success today.

It is great that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton chose this subject. There are always thousands of possible choices, but there could have been no better one. I offer him huge congratulations and thanks from all of us who have campaigned on this issue, not least the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who I am sure is off doing something important—he is probably doing some media. He should rightly get the plaudits for first introducing this subject in a ten-minute rule Bill.

The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) raised the issues of bereavement and baby loss in an Adjournment debate, and when she approached Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. Members for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), for Colchester, for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and me, about setting up an all-party parliamentary group, I did not hesitate. Indeed, I had some guilt because I had been here for 10 years and had felt the importance of all these issues but had never felt brave enough to do what she and other colleagues, who were brand new to the House, were able to do with such vigour and immediacy. So, I continually take my hat off to her and those other Members for everything they have done to show leadership on this and take it forward. The great success in the short two years that that all-party group has been going is astonishing, with the bereavement care pathways, the bereavement suites and now this Bill on bereavement leave and pay. I am so thrilled and proud to be a small part of that group and to support it as much as I can.

I just want to give a small example from my journey when this happened to me, as sitting here has brought it all back and brought tears to my eyes. It was a very different time then, 19 years ago, and I was working part-time. I was not on a zero-hours contract, but I did not get pay for being off sick. My employer was good and gave me time off, but it was without pay. Of course I got time off for the funeral, but without pay. I was off for about two weeks but it was never paid. I did not have to take holiday to grieve and have the funeral, but, equally, I was not paid. My husband had a good employer and could have taken time off with pay but, like the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was saying about people dealing with grief in different ways, he could not wait to get back to work. That caused problems and I still have not quite forgiven him for that, because I really needed him then. However, he chose to go back to work, needing to do so as his way of coping. So it is right that this is not forced upon people, but he would have chosen to have taken that time later if the option had been available.

I want to end my comments by commending the Bill to the House. I hope it has a swift passage through; it would be amazing if we could get it on the statute book by Easter—that would be fantastic. Again, I thank all the hon. Members who have brought it this far, especially the hon. Members for Colchester and for Thirsk and Malton.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

We will inform employers through the various advisory services, via gov.uk and via other means. We will also work with ACAS to ensure that the maximum number of employers are made aware of the legislation. The efforts of all in this House to amplify the message would be extremely welcome.

More needs to happen in various areas in the handling of bereavement as a whole. We would like more employers to familiarise themselves with the ACAS guidance, “Managing bereavement in the workplace—a good practice guide”, which was developed in conjunction with the charity, Cruse Bereavement Care. This has been created specifically to support employers in managing staff who have suffered a bereavement.

The fact is that, as well as needing to take time off work, employees may also find that their performance is affected when they return, or they may be temporarily unable to perform their role. I think that that is highly likely, and other hon. Members have already stated that it is impossible in some cases of bereavement—particularly when the loss is of a child—for someone to concentrate as they would normally. I am the first to accept that this experience could exceed the two-week period that we are here to discuss. We are bringing a new entitlement into law, but I do not wish to discourage employers from understanding that all cases are different and that, of course, some people will need greater periods of flexibility in how they approach their work following a bereavement.

The guidance sets out the benefits of effective engagement at such a time and the positive effect that it can have on the employee and the business in the long run. The employee feels supported, less pressured and therefore better able to deal with the issue they face, and that helps them with the overall process of grieving.

Alongside that, employees need to understand better what other support may be available to them should they suffer the terrible loss of a child. Concerns have been raised in the House in recent months that the cost of child funerals can be an additional concern. As such, where people meet eligibility conditions, a contribution towards the cost of a simple, respectful funeral may be available through the social fund funeral expenses payment scheme. In addition, it is open to local authorities to waive burial and cremation fees for children, as some already do.

Parents who lose a child at the point of birth also need quality care and support. They are the unit that somehow has to carry on functioning after such a devastating outcome. I am a former employer myself, and although it is many years since I was responsible for a lot of people in the workplace, I am pleased to say that I had a management team who tried their best to empathise with parents who had stillborn children or who lost their child, as the mother of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington did all those years ago, at just a few days old—indeed, the majority of parents who suffer the loss of a child under the age of 18 do so in the first six months of their child’s life.

Losing a child is a truly terrible time, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton is introducing a Bill to dramatically improve the situation for anyone unfortunate enough to be in the employ of a firm totally lacking in empathy. Such parents do need the protection we are here to debate this afternoon, but we know, as I said earlier—this was certainly true in my firm, and it is true in the vast majority of firms I am aware of—that having a period of time to cover the immediate bereavement and the tragic, heart-rending funeral service is the basics, and one has to continue to empathise with the individual after they return to work. As one of my hon. Friends pointed out during the debate, people obviously do not come back to work able to switch back on again. They will need time off for certain things. The registration of the death and all that sort of thing carries on. From my personal experience of bereavement—fortunately, it did not involve the death of a child, but being responsible for estates—I know that these things just take time. People want to take time over them; they do not want to feel in a rush and up against a deadline.

Of course I understand the needs of employers, and my company was fortunate enough to have people who could cover for absence and that sort of thing. It is different for a very small employer, and I do sympathise—it can be very difficult. It is also difficult for the self-employed. We have not heard much mention of the self-employed, who are not covered by this legislation, on the basis that they can take time off because they are their own boss. On the other hand, if they are providing services, there are other pressures on them. They have the difficulty of having to deal with customers and so forth without the back-up of a team underneath them who can take up the reins. When we come to consider issues regarding the self-employed in our response to the Taylor review, I trust that we will be able to cover some of these aspects for people who are currently not of employed status.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The Minister made a very good point about the time needed for people to go on the bereavement journey. Will someone who feels able to come back to work sooner but then finds that the grief hits later on—as it does; it hits different people at different stages—be able to take some of the two weeks’ paid leave later, perhaps within a six-month period? Will the Bill accommodate that?

[Margot James]

That is definitely the sort of thing that can be raised in Committee. At the moment, the period is two weeks. The hon. Member for Lincoln asked whether it could be divided into days here and there. That is currently not possible within the various types of family leave and carer leave that exist on the statute book. The leave is divided into weeks, but it can be taken over a period of time. I am sure that when hon. Members get to discuss the Bill in Committee, the fixed period of time might be a subject of debate.

Thanks in large part to the work of the all-party group, the Government have recognised that the NHS needs to improve its own environments. That has led to better bereavement rooms and quiet spaces, now at nearly 40 hospitals. The Department of Health has funded Sands to deliver a national bereavement care pathway to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the NHS. Only last week, 11 pilot sites were announced in hospital trusts that are going to implement the new pathway.

From time to time, I receive letters from parents who have suffered the loss of a baby in my local hospital. I know that efforts have been made to improve the services for those parents. If the parents have lost their baby very, very shortly after childbirth, I can think of no worse place to be than the average maternity suite. My heart goes out to those parents. I am glad that the work of the all-party group is leading to improvements in the care in our local hospital trusts.

Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for choosing this subject from among so many interests competing for our time. I very much welcome the consensus among hon. Members across the House and thank them all for their hugely valuable and sensitive contributions.