Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to encourage people to achieve a better work-life balance.

Since June 2014, all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer have the Right to Request Flexible Working, where employees can request a change to their hours, working patterns or to work from home. We want to make it easier for people to work flexibly and in our manifesto, we committed to further encouraging flexible working by consulting on making it the default unless employers have good reasons not to.

We realise that managing a work-life balance is particularly important for certain individuals. One such group is those with caring responsibilities. That is why the Government has consulted on proposals to introduce a new employment right to one week of additional leave for unpaid carers – to support working carers with balancing their employment and caring responsibilities. The consultation closed on 3^rd August and received over 800 responses. We are now analysing the responses and the Government will issue its response in due course, setting out the way forward.