Carer’s Leave Bill

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on ensuring that his Bill has gone through its remaining stages and now passes to the other place—I hope to feel the same sense of achievement shortly. I am conscious that some in the Chamber today who are looking to speak will have personal experience of caring for a relative or other dependant, and I am very grateful for their participation in today’s debate. With the leave of the House, I will save my other thanks for later on, but the number of Members who have spoken out about their experiences during the course of the Bill’s progress has brought to life how widespread caring is for so many, both in this House and outwith. It is wonderful that following Second Reading and Committee, we have time to debate this important issue again today.

Statistics from the 2020-21 family resources survey show that approximately 4.2 million people across the UK are providing unpaid care by looking after an elderly or disabled family member or another dependant, and that the majority of those individuals are women aged over 50. In the previous debate, there was much conversation about how we get people back into the workplace; we know that the Government have a particular focus on those aged over 50, so I am very hopeful that they will continue to support my Bill, because I believe it will help towards that goal.

The reality is that becoming a carer is something that can happen to any one of us. Caring is a reality for many millions of people across the UK. It can take many forms: it can be day-to-day physical caring, washing, dressing and feeding for those who cannot care for themselves; it can be making medical appointments or arranging for paid care; it can even just be doing the shopping for a housebound elderly neighbour. Caring or being cared for is something that almost everyone will experience at some point in their life.

However, sadly, Carers UK research found in 2021 that 37% of working carers said that they needed unpaid carer’s leave in order to manage working and caring, and a further one in seven said that without carer’s leave, they would have to reduce their working hours or give up work altogether. Those statistics become even starker when we talk to carers of those with more debilitating conditions, such as multiple sclerosis. The preliminary findings of a recent survey of unpaid carers by the MS Society found that 13% of respondents had given up working and 20% had taken early retirement due to their caring responsibilities. Over two thirds said that their work had been impacted due to the help they provided to their loved one with MS.

My own experience, going out to my constituents to see if I could find people who would benefit from this legislation, brings those statistics to life. So many carers in North East Fife got in touch with me to say that they had already given up work because of their caring responsibilities. I very much hope that the Bill will help encourage some of those people to find a way back to work, and therefore make a contribution to the economy as well as providing that vital care.

The new employment rights in the Bill are vital at a time when the Government are trying to get people, especially the over-50s, back to work. I firmly believe that they will also help businesses, many of which are already under significant financial strain without the costs of staff turnover and continued recruitment. The successful passage of the Bill will be a significant milestone: carer’s leave will provide increased flexibility to unpaid carers who are balancing paid employment with their caring responsibilities. It will enable them to take some time out of work if required, which will support them to stay in work because, vitally, they will not have to choose between caring and working.

The Bill creates a new entitlement for employees to take up to a week of unpaid leave a year in order to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need. I certainly hope that, for example, things such as regular hospital appointments—those planned things that carers know are potentially going to happen—can be made easier by the provisions in the Bill.

All employees who meet the eligibility conditions will be entitled to that unpaid leave, regardless of how long they have worked for their employer. That means that the entitlement will be available to eligible employees from the first day of their employment, which is critical in overcoming the hurdles that carers experience when re-entering the workplace, or even when changing jobs—that was talked about in the previous debate by, I think, the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra). I was a police officer, and when I joined the police at the age of 22, I firmly expected to spend 30 years in the police service, but that is not how it has worked out. Portfolio careers—people moving between jobs—are increasingly becoming a feature of everyday working life. The Bill will help support that, because people will know that they can take its provisions into different jobs.

The leave will be available to take flexibly, in half-day increments. Importantly for employers and employees, there will be no requirement to provide evidence in relation to a request for carer’s leave. That will make it easier for carers to take the leave and also benefit employers, as they will not have to deal with potential data protection issues, such as holding third-party medical details. Having worked in human resources, I know that will also help with the psychological contract, because if employees feel that their employers trust them in relation to taking the leave, that will help build up the good relationships that are so important in the workplace.

Employees taking carer’s leave will have the same employment protections associated with other forms of family-related leave. That includes protection from dismissal or detriment as a result of having taken the leave. Bringing carer’s leave together with those other forms of leave and making employment protections consistent makes it easier for businesses to administer and for employees to understand.

Importantly, the rights will be available to carers who do all types of caring for different sorts of people. The definition is simple: they must be managing the care of a dependent who requires long-term care. The Bill does not use the usual narrow definition of “dependent” and includes anyone who may

“reasonably rely on the employee to provide or arrange care”.

That could be care for a spouse, civil partner, child or parent—my husband is a carer for his own mother—but it could also be care for someone who lives in the same household as the employee, such as a tenant or a lodger, or even a next-door neighbour or an elderly couple down the road. One of the positives of covid—I always hesitate to use the word “positive” about covid—was the community spirit it engendered, and the help people gave to others in their communities; the Bill encourages that spirit. Such a broad definition will ensure that a highly diverse range of caring relationships are in the scope of the leave entitlements.

The definition of “long-term care need” is also broad. It includes disability, but it also encompasses a person with

“an illness or injury (whether physical or mental) that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months”.

In addition, it includes a person requiring care for any reason connected with old age, so the definition is all encompassing.

I firmly believe that carer’s leave is a right that has to work for businesses as well as for carers, for employers as well as for employees. While the leave is designed to be flexible and to fit around the day-to-day lives of carers, employees still need to give reasonable notice. The notice requirements broadly follow those for taking annual leave, so again they are easy to understand from both sides.

Carer’s leave is a right to have, rather than a right to request. However, the Bill recognises that there may be circumstances when granting leave will be difficult, so an employer will be able to postpone but not deny the leave. That allows the space for employers and employees to come to arrangements that work best for both parties.

Over recent months, I have had the privilege of meeting some businesses that already have carer’s leave in place, in order to learn how carer’s leave works for them. I have learned that being carer friendly is not only not a detriment to businesses, but actually helps them. Employees who feel supported are more motivated and loyal. The cost savings on recruitment and additional productivity easily counterbalance any minor administration costs. On Twitter this morning, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said it supports the Bill. I am a former associate member of that institute, but it is telling that the main body for HR in the UK recognises that the Bill is good for business and for its members. That tells us that the Bill is taking the right steps.

Many other hon. Members have also met with companies that are in favour of carer’s leave, as I found out at the drop-in I sponsored last week. I thank the representatives of TSB and Centrica, who came to Parliament, for giving up their time to share their experiences with us. Carers UK runs an effective employers group and it is good to hear those positive stories.

Every experience of caring is unique. Without statutory employment rights, everyone’s experience of dealing with their employer will differ. Some employers will be excellent in their support, others indifferent and many more somewhere in between. The Bill will benefit everyone, no matter where they are on that scale.

One key thing that came across in speaking to constituents and others who are carers was the in-built guilt they have as a carer. On the one hand, they feel guilty because they cannot give the care they want to give to their loved one or dependent. On the other hand, they feel guilt dealing with their employer to ask for time off, potentially unpaid, and feeling they are not making a full contribution. Hopefully, the Bill will help to mitigate some of that.

One such constituent was Judith, who I spoke with last week to hear about her experience of caring and what the Bill would mean for her. She is currently working four days a week, hoping to move to three days, and is in positive conversations with her employer. She is responsible for her elderly father who, having had a tumour removed last year, has had more and more frequent hospital trips for treatment arising from that. His most recent visit lasted over a week and has left him very disorientated since he came out of hospital. Judith feels lucky in that she has been able to take unpaid leave from work, but she does feel that guilt I referenced and feels worried that the good will of her employer will not last for ever.

As I mentioned earlier, carer’s leave as a right to have, not a right to request, should help—that is the key thing here. Judith does not yet have it as a right to have. The Bill will give her that, take away the guilt of asking work for time off and remove the worry of what might happen next. The reality is that the situation will only get more difficult for Judith and her family. Indeed, her brother has made the decision to give up work and rely on his pension. That is a very noble thing to do, and within the family they are all sharing the load, but it demonstrates, on trying to keep people in the workplace, that we have much more still to do to help enable people to continue to do both work and caring.

I have heard from employers who believe that this new employment right will be the catalyst for starting conversations about caring. Even within carer- friendly organisations, getting people to talk about their responsibilities, or simply to even recognise themselves as carers, can be a challenge. This new employment right makes caring as ordinary a part of working life as taking a sick day with covid or maternity leave after a baby. It will be a huge shift in how we understand carers. I have previously mentioned that the largest employer in my constituency, the University of St Andrews, has very good policies in place, but it recognised, when looking at the Bill, that it did not necessarily bring them all together properly. What happened was that people were coming to their line manager when they hit a crisis point, as opposed to engaging at an earlier stage to get the support they needed that meant their family did not hit that crisis point.

At the other end of the spectrum, for carers whose employers do not have any policies in place to support them, the new law will be a vital first step, both in the actual leave they can take and in feeling seen and supported in work. The multiple sclerosis survey I referenced earlier found that of carers who are currently employed, only 5.2% had been offered advice or support to help them stay in work. That is simply atrocious, and I hope the Bill will spark those conversations. Importantly, although carer’s leave entering law will feel like an end, it is also a start.

There is still so much more we can do to support unpaid carers. In the long run, I hope most companies will offer paid carer’s leave and that we may even get a statutory entitlement to such. We must fund day centres and reform carer’s allowance, so that carers can potentially earn more before that allowance drops off. As I said to the Prime Minister before Christmas, the caring never stops.

We can also do so much more to help carers into work through training and support. With the Carers Trust, I visited Camden Carers last week to learn about a project called Working for Carers, which is focused specifically on getting carers who have left the workplace because of their caring responsibilities back into the workplace. I met two participants, one of whom, Nicola, as a result of the help she had received, was setting up her own business, while the other, Amanda, was returning to work in education as a classroom assistant. It is proof that in the right conditions carers can work and be highly valuable to our economy.

This is an incredible day to see the Bill through its final Commons stages. I have had lots of “Well done, Wendy”, but I am very conscious that getting this opportunity starts with a number being drawn out of a big glass bowl. So there is a degree of luck, but I firmly believe it is what we do with that luck afterwards that is important. I very much hope the Minister will rise to confirm the Government’s continued support for the Bill. As anyone who has brought a private Member’s Bill will know, there is a certain level of anxiety in seeing your Bill go off to the other place without you, but I am confident that my colleague Lord Fox of Leominster will be an excellent guardian of the Bill and I thank him for taking it on. I will leave it there, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I hope to speak again later, with the leave of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Chamberlain]

With the leave of the House, I want to thank everybody who has taken the time to be here today and to speak. It is worth mentioning that, as a Liberal Democrat, I follow in the path of others in my passion for carers and their rights: the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) is currently doing on kinship care is very important, and our leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), has spoken many times in the House about his own caring experiences and has worked hard with organisations such as Carers UK to forward carers’ rights.

It has been a real pleasure working in partnership with Carers UK, which I thank for its amazing support on the Bill; it has made things very straightforward. I also want to mention the Carers Trust and the Scottish Government’s Carer Positive scheme—I have become an employer who supports carers myself, and I think that scheme should be looked at beyond Scotland. I also thank the carers working in North East Fife. They introduced me to the CRAP carers—the compassionate, resilient and patient group in St Andrews. I also thank the MS Society: I am grateful that it gave me sighting of its preliminary findings, which I mentioned in my Third Reading speech, and I hope the Government will take note of those findings when they are published later this year. I also want to acknowledge my senior researcher, Kathryn Sturgeon, who had her work on the Bill recognised by winning the project lead award in the inaugural cross-party staff network awards earlier this year.

I thank the staff in BEIS. We have seen one another regularly, and they have been a fantastic support; I know they did a great amount of work in the background on the Bill before it was introduced, consulting with stakeholders and formulating this policy area. As the Minister mentioned, he is not the only Minister I have been speaking with in relation to the Bill; I also recognise the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt)—who spoke on Second Reading—and the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell). Both this Minister, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), and the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), came to my drop-in event last week, and I have photographic evidence of their support for the Bill as it goes on to its remaining stages.

I am so grateful to all Members who spoke today. There are too many to mention, but I hope that both the Minister’s responses and what I have said in my speech have described the balance that we are attempting to strike by making carer’s leave a day-one right. I really hope that people can bring their whole selves to work—the skills, knowledge and behaviours that they have as carers—in order to be able to work hard for their employers, and I hope the Bill mitigates some of the concerns about people potentially abusing the system. I do need to mention the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), who said very kind words about me—I myself did not serve, but I worked for the Career Transition Partnership. He and I believe that the vast majority of veterans make a very positive contribution to the workplace, but hopefully the Bill will help provide support for those who need it.

The Bill is a huge step in the right direction for carers across the UK who volunteer to help loved ones with their caring needs. There is clearly much still to do in that regard, but I am very grateful to hon. Members for their support, and I look forward to watching the Bill’s progress in the other place.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.