Baby Leave for Members of Parliament

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Some years ago, Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I had to work out how to handle pregnancy in Parliament at similar times. It is lovely to see you in the Chair.

Let me begin by paying tribute to the brilliant speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds). Their speeches alone ought to persuade everyone that the motion should be not only passed, but dealt with very swiftly by the Procedure Committee. It is surely a no-brainer. It is embarrassing that, 100 years after women were given the vote, Parliament does not have the system for maternity and paternity leave that was described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman).

If other organisations can do this, why can we not do it as well? Shops do it, factories do it, businesses do it, doctors’ surgeries do it, police forces do it, schools do it: every other organisation manages to find a way of doing it. Why on earth can we not do it, especially given that ours is the organisation that has supposedly told so many of those other organisations that they must do it? We tell them that they must have arrangements for leave, but somehow we cannot sort that out for ourselves.

I personally think that this country’s maternity and paternity arrangements are not strong enough. I think that there is not enough provision. I think that culture changes are still needed. I think that too many unnecessary obstacles are put in people’s way. I also think that maternity discrimination is a serious problem. The law is not enforced, and arguably is not strong enough, to ensure that women do not find themselves being made redundant, being demoted or losing responsibilities when they take maternity leave. Similarly, men feel that they cannot take paternity leave, for fear that any of those things will happen. How can we, as Members of Parliament, challenge errant employers who say, “It is too difficult,” or, “We are too special in our particular workplace: we cannot possibly provide for people having babies,” if we do not sort this out ourselves?

I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham, who has pioneered so many of these debates and has led the way for so many of us to follow. It was certainly much easier for me to take maternity leave—both as an MP and as a Minister—because of not just the leadership but the personal support of my right hon. and learned Friend, and it is hugely important that she is still doing the same for each generation of women and, indeed, each generation of men. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and the work that she has done on the Women and Equalities Committee to support and promote this reform. I agree with her, too, that there should be wider reforms, not just in Parliament but throughout the country. I know that other parties support that as well.

Having a baby is normal. It is so normal that it is why we are all here. Parliament ought to be able to cope with what is normal, and Parliament ought to show leadership by making it possible. Of course it will always be a challenge, and there will always be chaos. For me, much of that chaos involved travelling to and fro with small children, and not just with a baby. I was a dab hand at changing nappies on a fast-moving train, but the potty training was a little bit more challenging. We had a few sticky moments with a portable potty with a lid on it when I put it on a shelf on one of those fast-moving trains.

Having small children and being a Member of Parliament will always involve some complexities. It is an honour to be a Member of Parliament and to represent our constituents, but it ought to be made possible to manage both, as all too often it is not. A former hon. Friend of ours, who has since left the House, was asked to come in for votes when her baby was very small. At that time, we were not even allowed to take babies through the voting Lobbies. We ended up in a mad “baby relay”: we took it in turns to vote and to carry the baby while she went to vote. That was great for us, because we had the chance to cuddle a tiny little baby, but the truth is that neither she nor the baby should have been here. They were here because it was a tight vote, and there was pressure on Members to come in.

As many Members have said, this should not depend on favours. It should not depend on special deals and arrangements. It should not depend on the Whips. It should just be a very sensible, practical arrangement. Given that we come up with practical arrangements for all sorts of other organisations throughout the country, it should not be beyond the wit of the House to come up with one that works here.

The truth is that for any working mum—and often for working parents—there is always a sense of guilt and conflicting responsibilities. MPs who are mothers feel guilt towards the newborn because they are trying to do their constituency casework at the same time, and a sense of guilt towards their constituents because they should actually be in Parliament or at a meeting. They have a sense of responsibility towards Parliament, towards constituents, towards the baby, towards the family, but also towards so many other women who might be finding it hard to take maternity leave. We feel that we have a responsibility to show that it is possible—that we do not have to pretend to be superwomen and to be able to do it all at once because otherwise it means that we are not doing our job properly. We want people in all walks of life to be able to combine parenthood and employment, because that is normal. It is what we do. We should end the muddling through and put the proper arrangements in place.

Finally, I ask Ministers to have another look at the arrangements for ministerial maternity leave. I first took ministerial maternity leave 16 years ago. We were muddling through then as well; we later attempted to introduce more formal arrangements, but they then disappeared. They need to be brought back, but they also need to be revised.

It is the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote. What better time could there be not just to get this sorted, but to get it sorted really, really fast? That would be our next step, not just towards equality for people in this House, but to enable us to continue to be confident pioneers for equality throughout the country.