Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the speeches that have been made, particularly on kinship care, but recognise the challenges that carers face. I am sure that the debate on remuneration for carer’s leave will continue. I am contributing on this group because of Amendment 81, from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan of Canton. I would say that it is quite odd for this to have been grouped alongside the other issues, recognising the very serious situation of pregnancy loss. Before the noble Lord spoke, I was not aware that this was relating to an inquiry at the other end. I have only just started reading aspects of that report, so I am not as fully informed as he was in presenting this. However, there are some issues here that I am concerned about.

Thinking through this, only three other countries in the world include parts of pregnancy loss in terms of being formally considered for bereavement leave. That is not a reason not to do it, but it is important to recognise that we would still be quite a considerable outlier. It needs careful consideration. I am not dismissing it in any way, but I am conscious that the Government responded on 25 March and I am slightly disappointed that we have not yet seen an amendment tabled. I appreciate that some of these things take a bit of time, but I had hoped that in Committee we would be able to consider what the Government were going to table in this regard.

As the Government have set out in their response to the committee and as is set out in ACAS guidance, a number of these issues are already covered in terms of pregnancy or maternity-related illness. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, said about this becoming a potential HR issue. It is discriminatory for any such illness in any way, including miscarriage, and molar pregnancy and ectopic pregnancy would be covered very straightforwardly by that.

I have a particular concern about proposed subsection (2B)(a)(iv) in his Amendment 81, which widely casts the net of any medical abortion. It is already recognised that any abortion after 24 weeks is automatically covered in bereavement leave. The same is true of stillbirth, which, in the UK, is considered to be the loss of a pregnancy at 24 weeks and above. The two are not causal or directly related—obviously, there is a correlation in the timing. It just so happens that we have our current abortion limits, with certain exceptions, up to 24 weeks. So I am concerned that, in effect, proactive abortions taken up to 24 weeks would be covered in this amendment. I do not know whether that is the intention of the Government in their response, because, as I have said to the House already, I have not yet had the chance to read the entire report from the Women and Equalities Committee.

On proposed subsection (2B)(b), I say that I have had many friends who have, not always successfully, had children through IVF. Thankfully, many people do, but they recognise when they enter into it some of the challenges they definitely will face in trying to have a child by IVF. As it stands, on average, the success rate for a woman below 38 is about 35% for any particular embryo-transfer loss. Once a woman starts to go over the age of 40, that falls—it has gone up from 2012 from an 8% to a 10% success rate in 2022. That careful consideration needs to be thought about by the Government and your Lordships in this House when we decide to extend certain entitlements, while recognising the heartbreak that can happen at certain moments in people’s lives in these particularly sensitive moments. I am conscious that this is a sensitive issue to bring up at this point in the Bill.

I do believe that I would like to understand this in more detail. I will take the time to do some more research myself, but I am very keen to hear from the Government quite where this is stretching. I appreciate they have given a certain kind of wording to the House of Commons Select Committee on this point, but the provision of further details to the Committee here would be very welcome.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all speakers from your Lordships’ House for what has been an excellent debate. It is a genuine pleasure for me to participate, hopefully quite briefly.

The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, gave a moving speech, which was made more moving by the knowledge that Sarah Owen is at the Bar today, and I thank both of them for their contributions, but especially Sarah.

Amendment 81 has our support, not least as a catalyst to try to have the sort of debate we need and the careful consideration that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, also alluded to. I hope it can start to move things forward.

We also support Amendment 134, which was so ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. This again is an important issue that we want to have more conversations about following this debate.

My noble friend Lord Palmer gave a very spirited and strong advocacy for kinship care, and that was supported across the House—here is another area where there is an absolutely clear and present need for carers to be officially brought into the carers’ community.

The point on fostering was also well made by my noble friend, as was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about short-term fostering as something we should seek to bring into that. All these amendments are, in a sense, broadening the scope of carers and where we should be considering. For all of them, I hope the Minister will be able to stand up and say “Let’s have a debate following this particular group. Let’s talk with interested parties to see how some or all of this could start to be moved forward”.

I hope your Lordships will excuse me if I focus on paid carer’s leave. I had the great honour of piloting Wendy Chamberlain’s Private Member’s Bill through your Lordships’ House with, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, the strong support of the Conservative Government. During that time, I had a chance to meet a lot of carers and a lot of employers of carers—big companies such as Centrica, which the noble Lord mentioned, and much smaller companies. They all set out the advantages of having a proper, strong relationship with their carers and the starting point, which we established through that Private Member’s Bill, of unpaid carer’s leave.