Career Breaks: Parents of Seriously Ill Children

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Robbie Moore

Monday 3rd February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 638449 relating to career breaks for parents of seriously ill children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. No parent should have to go through the upset and anguish of seeing their child diagnosed or suffering with a serious illness. Sadly, it is not within our power to prevent these terrible situations, but what is within our power as legislators is to provide support and reassurance to parents who end up in those traumatic situations. We can help ease not only the process, but the parents’ return to work at the end of their child’s treatment, or throughout the child’s treatment, should the individual circumstances permit.

We should remember that the workplace and being in work is often about more than just money, although of course money is very important. Work gives us a sense of purpose, belonging and normality. It can therefore be a terrible situation for a parent if they rather unexpectedly find themselves in the position of not only losing their job, but fearing for their child’s health. Sometimes, with care treatment plans being longer than expected, additional complexities may arise if the child is particularly unwell. Depending on the child’s illness, they may need to attend regular appointments at the hospital, sometimes more often than was originally envisaged, or there may be a dedicated treatment centre that is further than one may have initially realised. Therefore, the treatment and care that has to be provided by the parent is sometimes not known at the outset and can be particularly onerous.

Some children may need around-the-clock care and attention, with no other family member or friend to provide that additional care, or the parent may simply be the only person the child has to care for them. At the end of the treatment, whether it is successful or not, it can sometimes be incredibly difficult for the parent to return to the workplace. Indeed, the job may not be waiting for them at the end, ready for them to return to. The parent may struggle to get back into the jobs market at a cost to them, their children and the state.

Let us take the situation of Christina Harris, who started this petition and who, I am honoured to say, is with us in the Public Gallery. Indeed, I was honoured to meet Christina before the debate, and it is great to see her, her friends and her child, Skye, here. Skye was diagnosed during a Christmas period, and on the first day back to work, Christina was told that she would not be paid and was shocked to discover that she had no statutory protection to fall back on. Skye’s treatment, once diagnosed, was to take approximately two years. Although Christina’s employer could not provide her wages during the time that Christina was caring for Skye, her employer at least kept the role open to Christina while she was initially absent from work.

Six months in, Christina was asked to attend a meeting with her employer in which she felt that she was put in a very difficult position, and her employer was completely unwilling at the start to discuss the flexible working options. After another six months, Christina’s employment contract was terminated, despite her having provided 19 years’ of service to the same company, and obviously she still had to deal with Skye’s care. It is great to see that Skye is on the mend and returning to a good state of health. After a year of uncertainty, Christina was left taking part-time work to make ends meet while struggling with providing the care for Skye.

This situation is unlike any other regarding parenthood and work. Let us take the example of a parent having an accident; parents have access to bereavement leave. One of the better parts of the Employment Rights Bill that is going through this House includes a right to neonatal leave and pay, easing this exact issue for newborns, but not for older children. Even in the classic case of unplanned pregnancy affecting a career, parents still have nine months to prepare, but a child can become ill at a moment’s notice and through no fault of the parents or the child. Despite that, however, the options for support are incredibly limited, which is why the petition is before the House.

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

The hon. Member pointed out some of the increased employment rights that we should see under the Employment Rights Bill. In the previous Parliament, there was no employment rights Bill, but private Members’ Bills did improve the situation in part: the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 on flexible, working promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), and my Carer’s Leave Act 2023. That suggests we need more support for parents—paid carer’s leave—so that people like Christina do not suffer in the way that the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) has outlined.

[Robbie Moore]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. That absolutely highlights the importance of why the petition needs to be considered by the Government and the Minister of the day. The Employment Rights Bill that is working its way through the House includes some positive measures. Potentially, this petition is an additional thought that the Minister should consider, given the strength of feeling shown through the number of people who have signed it.

In the vast majority of cases, these situations are completely unexpected. As I said, who knows when a child is going to become seriously ill? A diagnosis for a child can come out of the blue and a parent has to deal with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robbie Moore]

The hon. Member’s intervention gets to the nub of the why this petition is so important: not all employers are doing the right thing by their employees. That parent may be a single parent or have no support around them, and they can end up in a very difficult situation, having to deal quite immediately with the challenge that they face. A lack of reassurance in the workplace can add to their anxiety.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene a second time. It is right that we acknowledge employers who are doing this well. I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a vice-president of Carers UK. That organisation runs an important network that shares good practice among employers, and I urge any constituents who have signed the petition to get their employers linked in with it.

[Robbie Moore]

The hon. Member must have read my speech, because I will come later to the importance of all employers and employees being aware of the rights that already exist. There are a number of protection measures out there. The challenge is that employers and employees do not necessarily know what support is available.

Through the survey conducted by the Petitions Committee, we can see, as in Christina’s case, that when an employer is less flexible—or outright unhelpful, as we have seen in certain circumstances—things quickly get worse. Some 99% of respondents believed that employers should be required to provide career breaks for parents of terminally ill children. What Christina and thousands of other people are calling out for is statutory reassurance that, as soon as they are able to go back to work, the job will be available for them, at least for a limited period.

That reassurance—that as soon as treatment is complete, life can go back to normal—is hugely important for the parents’ mental health and to help them plan their future financial situation. Many families can afford to take a short-term hit to care for their child, although not all can, and they cannot do so without a guaranteed time period within which they can get back into the workplace at the end of that employment break. That is why I reiterate the importance of the petition.

The key point about reassurance was raised with me by It’s Never You, a charity run by two individuals who care deeply about the issue because they suffered the tragic loss of their own child from the terrible illness of cancer in 2021. When I met them, they passionately explained that getting support in place from day one is a major issue. For the first 90 days after a child has been diagnosed with a terrible illness, parents have to go through an incredible amount of restructuring in their life, so having their employer’s support from day one is vital. As employers themselves, those individuals are all too aware of the burden that a statutory requirement for a career break would have on smaller businesses, but they correctly highlighted to me that the lack of any Government-directed standard or benchmark is a recipe for chaos—and, as has already been indicated, many employers and employees do not necessarily know what level of support is available when a child is diagnosed with a serious illness.

Carer’s Leave Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Robbie Moore

Friday 21st October 2022 Commons Chamber

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

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

Let me first echo the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and say that it would be remiss of me not to comment on the fact that the Bill was scheduled to have its Second Reading on 9 September. Very sadly, the death of the late Queen Elizabeth prevented that. I am therefore pleased to have the opportunity to present the Bill today. Again like the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, I want to recognise the work of previous Ministers, in this case the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), who is in the Chamber, and thank them for their support for the Bill so far. I also thank the civil servants at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who have been a constant thread in the time that has elapsed since I took up this cause.

In many respects, carers are the backbone of our country. We think of caring for our loved ones as often a small and personal thing; we do it behind closed doors. It can be full-time personal care—washing, dressing or feeding; things that we instinctively think of as private—or it can be, for instance, making appointments or taking someone to a hospital appointment. Those are the small things that we do for people we love, or know, without questioning it. Taken together, however, all those individual acts of caring are huge. In 2016 the Office for National Statistics estimated that the gross value of unpaid care in the UK was almost £60 billion, and we know that that figure will only have gone up in the last six years. This country would collapse without its unpaid carers, and their importance must not be underestimated.

The Liberal Democrats have long championed unpaid carers, and never more so than under the leadership of my friend and carer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey)—I do not mean that he cares for me, but he has spoken in this House and other places about the care he gives to his family. At the height of the pandemic, the Liberal Democrats campaigned to have unpaid carers recognised as a priority group for vaccinations, and we have long been calling for employment rights for carers, including the type of leave that the Bill will introduce. Indeed, all Bills that will hopefully achieve Second Reading today are about improving employment rights for all.

Although I knew that the Bill had the backing of my party, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of cross-party support it has received. I have received support from Members from every party in the House, and I am pleased to see Members here today. Sadly, I know there would have been others, but for the rescheduling of the Bill. Indeed, I was even more ahead than the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, because I managed to secure members of the Committee before I got here. For example, I know that, among others, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on carers, and the hon. Members for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans), for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), and for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell), wanted to be here today, but they were unable to due to the rescheduling. I have been tapping them for Committee membership as a result.

I have had conversations with the Government, who I hope will support the Bill. It is disappointing that we have not had the opportunity to have an employment Bill, as proposed in the Queen’s Speech in 2019. That was long-promised, but sadly never delivered, and although that has given me, and others, the opportunity to bring forward employment legislation, we must ensure that other gaps are filled by the Government.

Members are here today because this is a good Bill, and if the House will bear with me, I will set out in more detail some of what it proposes. It will mean that for the first time ever, all employees from their first day of employment will be entitled to take time off to help manage caring responsibilities. That fills a gap in the current law whereby although employees can take limited time off for emergencies, and parents can take time off to care for their children, there is no provision for the day-to-day planned caring of adults.

The idea of a caring responsibility has been drafted widely to include as much as possible. As I said at the outset, a lot of things count as caring. Caring can include day-to-day physical support, taking someone to appointments or doing the shopping, liaising with medical staff, or sitting with someone as they struggle through a diagnosis. It could be helping elderly parents move into sheltered accommodation, or the time spent arranging for social carers to visit daily. It includes support for someone with a long-term physical or mental illness, and anything to do with old age.

The Bill has also been drafted widely to include as many caring relationships as possible. We would obviously expect it to cover immediate family, but the Bill goes further and includes not only cohabitees, tenants and lodgers, but anyone who reasonably relies on an employee to provide or arrange care. This summer I spoke to one of my constituents in relation to the Bill. In addition to caring for his wife, he does the shopping for an elderly neighbour. That small act of kindness is also caring, and the Bill recognises that.

The leave is flexible and incredibly light touch. It can be taken in half-day chunks, and it works through self-certification. The notice period is expected to be short, at twice the length of time to be taken plus one day. For most people, if they want a half day on Wednesday afternoon that means letting their employer know by Monday lunchtime. As flexible not emergency care, I believe that to be reasonable, and in line with current regulations for annual leave so easy for everybody to understand. Most importantly, employers cannot refuse a request for leave. They can ask for it to be postponed, but only in a manner that is reasonable.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I want to emphasise some of the points that the hon. Lady is making, which illustrate that having that flexibility built in with the notice provisions, and a Bill that affects anyone who is involved in providing care, is crucial. I commend her for her work in bringing forward this Bill.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution. Yes, we need to be flexible—that is important —because there is such a range of caring. It is also important, however, that we align that with other existing legislation, as that will make this easier and less burdensome for employers and employees to understand. I do not want the Bill to become law but then people do not utilise it, because they are not aware of it.

I met the Minister and officials to discuss the Bill and to ensure that it is the best we can get it before becoming law. That means that, in some areas, it does not potentially do everything that I would want it to do, if it were down to just me. For a start, my instincts would be to want the rights to be implemented immediately through primary legislation. That is not possible, which means I am trusting the Government to act in good faith in supporting the Bill, and I expect them to bring in the proposed regulations at the earliest possible opportunity. I will be here to make sure that they do.

The Bill does not go as far as Liberal Democrat policy would go. We would like there to be more time and for that to be paid, but I accept that this is a journey and that this is a vital first step in getting these rights on to the statute book now. There is nothing on the statute book that recognises leave for caring.

It is estimated that 2.3 million carers—that is a conservative estimate—cannot wait for the perfect policy to be put in place. They need these rights as soon as possible. According to the 2011 census, there are at least 3,000 carers in my North East Fife constituency. I spent summer recess meeting many of them. I have been told time and again that, although the Bill will not make their lives easy, because caring is challenging, it will help just a little bit to keep some of the plates spinning.

I learned a lot this summer about the vast variety of caring experiences that people have. Karen cares for her 91-year-old mother. She drives from Cupar in North East Fife to Annan every weekend to be with her mother—I assure the House that that is a long way; hon. Members should look it up on a map following the debate—to make sure that she is stocked up and to deal with any household tasks that need doing. Her mum is fiercely independent and wants to remain in her own home. She makes and manages her appointments and, despite the 125-mile distance between her and her mother, she is a carer and needs her employer’s support to make things work.