Tulip Siddiq
Main Page: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)Department Debates - View all Tulip Siddiq's debates with the Leader of the House
(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
Let me say again that I am absolutely committed to ensuring that women will be able to spend time with their new babies, and the fathers, including in cases of adoption. It is vital that they are able to do so. I have made it extremely clear that I will arrange for a debate during the September sitting, and we can then make fast progress.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
This morning, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on child care and early education, I hosted a lobby consisting of more than 100 nursery and childcare providers. They spoke to me at great length about the challenges that new parents face when they go back to their workplaces, and about maternity discrimination. Does the Leader of the House think that we, here in the House, have the moral legitimacy to lecture those in other workplaces about maternity discrimination and unfair practices when our Government have cheated a pregnant woman out of her vote in the most underhand manner?
Andrea Leadsom
I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady’s assessment, but I absolutely agree with the nursery workers whom she mentioned about the vital importance of women being treated fairly. What she is seeking to do is simply to politicise this issue, at a time when the Government have made it absolutely clear that there are guaranteed pairs for anyone on baby leave and that what happened yesterday was an error.