Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (First sitting)

Will Quince Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Gray, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to come to this Committee and work on this Bill, which is the first Bill that I will consider in my new role. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton has outlined what the clauses do; I will not repeat that. I will just say that I support the purpose of the clauses.

The hon. Gentleman also said that the fact that this legislation does not exist already is almost unbelievable; I cannot believe that it has taken until 2018 to table such a measure, and create the right to parental leave and pay. I am therefore pleased that, through this private Member’s Bill, we will create such legislation. I give thanks to the hon. Gentleman. By the way, we agree that everything is better up north; that is one of the few things we agree on. We also agree on the purpose of this Bill and we will use this Committee not only to improve the Bill—potentially—but to ensure that it is passed.

I have to say that I am humbled to speak in this debate alongside people who unfortunately have first-hand experience of losing a child, and I place on the record how much I admire all of them and all their strength.

The principle should be that if someone is in work—whatever type of work they do and for however long they have done it—when catastrophe strikes and their child dies, either as a result of a long-term health condition, a freak accident, or anything in between, they should have time off to recover and there should be no financial detriment to their taking that period of recovery. I just cannot imagine the pain and grief that someone experiences when they lose the closest person to them, and the fact that they need to function so quickly after they have felt such grief is impossible to comprehend.

As has been mentioned in previous debates, there are of course employers who will be very understanding and who will make time for people to grieve and to make arrangements. However, we also have to acknowledge, as I think this Bill does, that there are employers who do not show the same compassion at this most dreadful time.

All the statistics tell us something. For example, the National Council for Palliative Care says that a shocking 31% of people who have been bereaved in the last five years felt that they had not been treated with compassion by their employer. In my view, that is an astounding statistic and it is also proof that the Government must take action, and rightly are taking action, to provide protection for these people.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

This is, indeed, a very exciting day, and the culmination of nearly three years’ work. I fully support the Bill, amending the Employment Rights Act 1996 and giving parents who sadly suffer the loss of a child the statutory right to two weeks’ paid leave. I first introduced a Bill on this matter in the previous Parliament. The issue was, and remains, one of the burning injustices that I wanted to address during my time in Parliament, which is why I am so supportive of this Bill and the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton.

Why is this issue so important to me? It is important because it is personal. Having gone through the experience of losing a child in 2014, I saw the impact that it had on not just me but the wider family, and my wife in particular. We had all the protections that come with a stillbirth: the full rights of maternity and paternity, which do not exist for those who lose a child after six or seven months.

When I joined Parliament I started researching this subject and looking at why there was this gap in provision and no statutory protection. I came across a similar Bill that was introduced back in 2013 by the former Member for Glasgow South, Tom Harris. He recognised that there was an issue here, based on a personal case in his constituency. I have been liaising with Tom, who has been hugely helpful and supportive of my Bill coming back before the House as a ten-minute rule Bill and its continuation in this Bill. I also met a lady called Lucy Herd who set up an organisation and charity called Jack’s Rainbow. She sadly lost her child who I believe was around two years old, and she has campaigned tirelessly on this issue for several years.

Although Tom did not get as far as starting to draft his Bill, he presented a ten-minute rule Bill that kicked off the process of getting Parliament to think about the gap in provision. With the help of the Table Office, we then drafted a Bill that was an initial variant or incarnation of what we see in front of us today. Sadly, the Session timed out and we were not able to take it through to get it on the statute book.

Along with a number of colleagues from across the House who care passionately about this issue, we campaigned as hard as we could on a cross-party basis, and as a result managed to get this policy in all the four main parties’ manifestos, which was no mean feat. I will be eternally grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for picking up the baton and running with this Bill. When a Member comes high up in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, they are inundated with requests from charities, different organisations and local, constituency cases from people who want them to take on their cause and campaign. Within about 20 to 30 seconds of a phone call with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton when I knew that he had come up high up in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, he did not hesitate to say yes. That is a credit to him and shows how passionate he is too about addressing this issue.

I also thank the Government for their support for the Bill, and in particular the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), who has been so supportive. From the point at which my Bill fell in the last Parliament, we had a number of meetings in the Department to work out ways in which we could thrash this issue out and bring it forward again.

I also welcome the new Minister to his place. Knowing him as well as I do, and from the work that we have already done on this important issue, I know that he is as passionate as we all are about getting the Bill over the line and on to the statute book. I thank all Members from across the House who have supported this campaign and the Bill, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, all the different charities and organisations that have been so supportive of the Bill and have fed into the process with their different ideas. We will not agree with all of them—some of them are not entirely practical—but we might agree with some of them, and the point is that they have been very forthcoming with their ideas and views.

Why is the Bill needed? Why is it so important? To put it bluntly, it is because there can be few more distressing life events than the loss of a child. I know that a number of hon. Members across the Committee have experienced that loss. Personally, I can only speak having gone through a stillbirth. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose a child at one, three, five, 15 or 17. Up to 5,000 children die every year in the UK, which means that thousands of parents have to go through that personal tragedy.

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[Andrew Griffiths]

But it is absolutely right that the way in which people work and are employed, and the way in which consumers engage with services and contractors, has changed dramatically because of technology and the way that our lives are developing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, the Government have instigated the Taylor review. Matthew Taylor was commissioned to undertake an in-depth, detailed review last year of modern working practices. The question around the balance of rights and benefits between the employed and the self-employed has become much more relevant as we move away from conventional employment relationships, and there is a greater prevalence of new business models and employment practices.

I met Matthew Taylor just last night to talk about his review and his aspirations. It became clear from that discussion that his review is a stepping stone, and that these kinds of employment practices will continue to change and develop.

[Will Quince]

Many of us, me included, are broadly sympathetic to the points that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran is making. The concern on the Government side—certainly it is my concern—is about overcomplicating the Bill, thereby putting it in jeopardy. My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the Taylor review, which is particularly interesting. Could he give me comfort by confirming that this Bill, if it remained unamended in this regard, would fall under the scope of the Taylor review and its recommendations?

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I hope that I can give him the comfort he seeks. The Taylor review made a number of recommendations, including some relating specifically to the self-employed and those on zero-hours contracts, as has been said. It might be helpful for the Committee if I clarified the position on the employment status of people who are engaged on zero-hours contracts.

There is a perception that individuals who have flexible work contracts—or who work on zero-hours contracts, as they are termed—automatically have fewer employment rights. That is not the case and an individual’s employment status is established by the reality of their working relationship. An employer cannot and must not remove statutory rights for an individual simply by getting them to sign up to a contract with flexible hours of work. That means that individuals who are on zero-hours contracts, part-time contracts or any other type of flexible arrangement can still be eligible for the same statutory employment rights as any full-time employee doing the same work. An individual on a zero-hours contract might already qualify for parental bereavement leave under the terms of the Bill. It is important to ensure that that point is not lost in these important discussions.

The Government’s response to the Taylor review is long awaited. We hope we can publish that review very shortly. I cannot at this stage give a definitive time, but I think the term “imminent” is—

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

This is a place of debate and discussion, but there are no words that could possibly describe or give comfort when people talk of their personal experiences of losing a child. We have all heard stories in the Chamber and are humbled by them. It is important that we hear the personal experiences and tragedies to make sure that we consider the points around the legislation and to connect us to the wider world of other people who have suffered terrible experiences.

Defining a parent is without a doubt one of the toughest jobs we have here. In the world we live in, there are lots of different people who would consider themselves parents and lots of children who might define that in different ways than we might. Through the engagement we have had through Facebook and with charities on the issue, stories about all kinds of different elements that need to be properly considered have been relayed.

On Facebook, Mandy Ruston told us about her partner, not a biological parent, who, after they lost their child in a hit-and-run accident, was told by his employer to return to work in the early days after that tragedy. That is a situation that I am sure we would want to cover. Nicky Clifford talks about the child’s grandparents, who felt they suffered a double loss when Mrs Clifford’s son died. Together for Short Lives, along with Holly Simon, who contacted us on Facebook, believe that leave should be extended to legal guardians, working grandparents, aunts and uncles. The Rainbow Trust, which does such fine work providing support for families where children are diagnosed with life-threatening or terminal illnesses, felt we should extend the leave and pay to legal guardians such as foster carers, a point covered by the amendment. Unison, which represents 1.3 million trade union members, proposes the definition of a parent be set as wide as possible, including legal guardians and those with formal parenting responsibility.

I do not think we have time in this Committee to look at such matters in their totality. There is much debate and, although it is useful to consider the issues and it is very good to hear different perspectives from Committee members, I return to the point about the fragility of the Bill and the time we have to consider it in Committee and the Chamber. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury stated, this is a framework Bill that allows the powers to be debated and discussed properly and to go through consultation to ensure we get this right.

[Will Quince]

There are all sorts of amendments before us today and lots of us would like the Bill to go further than it does. There are many reasons why that is not practical or necessarily the right thing to do at the moment. Will my hon. Friend confirm that this is the beginning of the process? As we have seen with many other pieces of legislation, they get amended over time to increase the scope, bring more people in and provide further rights, but it has to start with a statute.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We all want to see this legislation on the statute books. To borrow a phrase I heard the Minister use, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. We need to get this legislation through, so I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

This is not only an enabling framework piece of legislation, but a signal to employers. It gives the minimum possible standard that employers should give to their employees. I am an employer outside this place—as well as inside it, as we all are. I am sure if one our team members suffered a tragedy such as this—whether they were a grandparent, a brother, an uncle, or, obviously, a parent—we would all be considerate and give time off. I imagine we would give time off at full pay, rather than statutory pay. That is what we expect.

Today we are setting the signal and framework, not just in the legislation but for employers to recognise the terrible tragedies and the impact on their workforce. I do not want to agree to amendments at this stage because of issues around timing and proper consideration. We could end up in ping-pong with the other place, with redrafting and other ideas about the definition of a parent, which would take time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury made some very good points about examples of parents—biological parents, step-parents by virtue of marriage or civil partnership, the mother or father at the time of birth, and adoptive parents. It is absolutely right to consider all of those. The concern would be about who we are missing, as that is probably not an exhaustive list. We need to consider this properly.

I have often heard the hon. Member for Swansea East speak with passion about these issues. I accept many of her arguments, such as including a person with parental responsibility or a foster parent. It is absolutely right that we should consider those. I have those same concerns but I am also concerned to ensure that the legislation gets through in good shape and good time, and that we have a parallel process for consultation on the definition of a parent in order to get it absolutely right.

I would be in favour of widening that as much as possible but we clearly need to have consideration for employers as well, to ensure that we get this right. I know that the Minister has officials from his Department looking at consultation on the definition of a qualifying parent. It is important to consider the outcome of that consultation. I am sure the Minister and his Department’s officials will do that. We will make sure that we properly consider these issues.

I encourage all Members to continue to input into the process to ensure that we get this right, without making a firm decision at this point. I hope my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Swansea East agree it is sensible not to press the amendments. To ensure we get this right, we will give it proper further consideration to ensure we have a proper, systemic approach to define accurately a parent in this regard.