- Considered in Grand Committee
- 4:41 pm
- Moved by
- That the Grand Committee do consider the Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
- My Lords, I am delighted to be here today for this debate on the draft regulations, which will benefit working families by providing valuable additional flexibility to paternity leave working alongside the paternity pay regulations.Currently, eligible employed fathers and partners are entitled to one or two consecutive weeks of statutory paternity leave and pay to care for their baby or support the mother. This must be taken within eight weeks of birth or placement for adoption. These regulations recognise the importance of fathers and partners spending valuable time with their children in the first year following birth or adoption and will make it easier for parents to take their full paternity entitlement.We know that having more flexibility in how paternity leave and pay can be taken is important to families. We consulted on this in 2019 through the Good Work Plan: Proposals to Support Families. We found that 64% of respondents wanted greater flexibility in when and how paternity leave could be taken. Allowing fathers and partners to take their leave up to a year following birth or adoption was the most commonly suggested measure to accomplish this. Our changes will provide this much-needed flexibility. These regulations will fulfil our 2019 manifesto commitment to make paternity leave easier to take. I want to set out briefly how they will do this.Our first change will allow fathers and partners to take their leave in non-consecutive blocks. Currently, only one block of leave can be taken, which can be either one or two weeks. Our change will remove this barrier by enabling parents to take two non-consecutive weeks of leave. We hope that providing fathers and partners with the flexibility to take their two weeks of leave non-consecutively means that they will find it easier to use their full entitlement and take their second week of leave. For some parents, taking two weeks of leave in one go is challenging due to pressures of work or for other reasons. Enabling parents to take their leave non-consecutively means they can take their leave at a time that works best for them and could lead to an increase in parents taking their second week of paternity leave.Our second change will allow fathers and partners to take their leave and pay at any point in the first year after the birth or placement for adoption of their child. This represents a big increase from the eight weeks following birth or adoption in which parents currently must take their leave. This change gives parents more flexibility to take their paternity leave at a time that works best for their family. For example, this change could enable a father or partner to take time off work to be the primary caregiver when the mother returns to work. This is important as evidence shows that fathers who spend time solo parenting are more likely to play a greater role in caring for their children in later years.
- 4:45 pm
- The Government have in place a range of leave and pay entitlements to support parents to balance their work and family responsibilities in a way that works best for them. For families who would prefer for a father or partner to take a longer period of leave, shared parental leave may be available. This entitlement allows eligible parents to share up to 50 weeks’ leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between them. Parents can also choose whether to take time off together or to stagger their leave and pay.
- The Government are also introducing new entitlements to enhance the current provision for working parents, which include the following. Additional protections against redundancy will, from 6 April 2024, be available for pregnant women and parents who are returning to work after a period of eligible parental leave. On improvements to flexible working, the Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations 2023 will, from 6 April 2024, mean that employees can request flexible working from their first day of employment, empowering them to ask for a working arrangement that suits them and their particular circumstances. On the introduction of carers’ leave, this new entitlement will, again from 6 April 2024, give unpaid carers one week of leave from work from their first day in a new job. This leave can be used to provide care or to make arrangements for the provision of care for a dependant with a long-term care need.
- The Government are also introducing new leave and pay entitlement for parents of children who spend time in neonatal care. This will give each eligible employed parent up to 12 weeks of additional paid leave on top of their existing entitlements if their baby is admitted to neonatal care in its first month of life. It will ensure that parents no longer find themselves in the incredibly difficult position of having to choose between risking their job and spending time with their baby during such a stressful time.
- Given all that, I beg to move this statutory instrument.
- My Lords, I thank the Minister for his presentation, which was very clear, and I welcome the movements that this statutory instrument represents. It is important to add more flexibility, to do things such as reducing notice, and to extend the period by which this leave can be used. The Minister is correct: the ability for fathers to spend time with their babies at this early stage is an extremely vital part of improving the level of parenting going forward.However, we have to be a bit realistic, in that we have an economy that is gradually moving towards an informal employment model, whether it is gig economy or zero hours, which means that an increasing number of people are missed out by this sort of measure. Then, of course, we have straightforward self-employed people, who are not part of this, and people who have not been working for long enough for their business. That starts to leave out a large number of people. I cannot give the exact number, but at least a quarter of fathers are not eligible because of those issues; it is probably more because the gig economy is increasing. I urge the Minister and the Government to consult with all of us about ways those fathers can be brought into the system, because at the moment there is a danger that they will slip through the net.We will be going into the election with a manifesto commitment to an increase in the amount of paternity leave that is available and in the level of flexibility. I am sure that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition will say something similar in a minute, perhaps with more specificity. However, I will make a special mention of those businesses that go beyond the law. Many businesses go way past the legal minimum, and one way of moving this forward is for the Government to recognise, praise and celebrate businesses that do far more than the current legal limit. They recognise that the fathers in their business benefit, not just as fathers but as employees. I think the Government and all of us can spend time celebrating that.
- My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I welcome this SI, as far as it goes. As he said, it is welcome, but this is not groundbreaking; we are talking about small moves in timescale, the length of leave, when it can be taken and the number of opportunities to take it. On the previous SI, we were all declaring our interests. My interest in paternity leave finished 21 years ago, when my youngest child passed his first birthday, but I declare my interest in a number of businesses that I advise, all of which treat their employees at a better and higher level than the legal minimum that this sets—and I shall come back to that.The SI, Explanatory Memorandum, impact assessment and the Minister’s introduction are all very clear. As I said at the start, this is welcome, but I have a few questions to raise. If the Minister cannot answer them, I am more than happy for him to write to me and place a record of that letter in the Library with answers to some of the specifics—but we support this SI going through.To work through the regulations, one thing that I was not clear about is the territorial application, which is England and Wales and Scotland. Why does it not also cover Northern Ireland? I was interested in that.Let us look at flexibility. When I did take paternity leave—Jeez, 23 or 24 years ago—my employer at the time, GMB trade union, offered two weeks, which could be taken within the first year, but there was no period that you had to take. These regs will cover two one-week blocks. Twenty-four years ago, I was able to take the first week, then my wife and I decided that I would take every Friday for the next five weeks, because she had help and support earlier in the week, and Fridays were the time that I could take to spend time with our child and allow her some respite. That flexibility of having one day a week for the next five weeks was a different way of taking it, but that is not covered by the regulations. So, just to take the point from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, a bit further, did the department look at widening that flexibility so that it could be taken as individual days?
- I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for making the point about the declaration of interests. I hope that, for once, I also have no interests to declare in a debate and no need to apologise after the event for not declaring them—but who knows? What is important is that the nation will benefit, and we may too; that is a good thing. I will answer some of the questions asked but am happy to follow up with answers to some of the more specific questions in writing.The noble Lord, Lord Fox, made some important points about celebrating and congratulating businesses that go beyond the statutory minimum. We should bear this in mind. I do not have the statistics on how businesses function in terms of percentages and performance but, to be honest, all the businesses that I have ever worked around or been involved with have always operated a different process for paternity leave, maternity leave and so on. That is a great thing; we should not forget it. These are minimum standards. It is important that I emphasise that. This should not be “the” standard, as it were; we hope for and expect companies—indeed, all bodies—to try to go beyond it. As the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, rightly said—28 years ago, was it?
- Twenty-four.
- Yes—24 years ago, the noble Lord had a greater degree of flexibility then than these minimum standards imply. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for raising that.I also thank the noble Lord for making a point about the self-employed. Mothers are eligible for maternity leave as self-employed persons but self-employed fathers are not eligible for paternity leave. I have not covered this area in my ministerial work but I would be comfortable going back to my colleagues and asking them to scrutinise the opportunities there further. Bearing in mind that self-employed people—again, I have been self-employed to some extent—have very different working patterns and living patterns, we should not necessarily conflate the two, but it is absolutely right to review and assess how we as a society support families and carers of babies and children.The noble Lord, Lord McNicol, made a number of important points. The first related to Northern Ireland. This area of legislation is devolved to Northern Ireland. We assume that it will follow the legislative work we are doing today—we cannot guarantee that but it is the assumption; there is some shaking of heads and nodding behind me—but, clearly, we believe that these minimum standards should be applied, certainly across Great Britain.The noble Lord, Lord McNicol, asked whether we looked at widening flexibility. I do not have the answer to that because I was not engaged in the preparation of this legislation, but I will come back to him, if that is acceptable. All these measures are always taken in the light of balancing our desire to create the sort of society that we want with the need for economic growth and bearing in mind how businesses function. The issue with all these pieces of legislation and regulations is that they apply across the board to all businesses, and some businesses, particularly very small ones, can often find compliance difficult. They might not have the flexibility over the professional employee basis that many noble Lords here may be more used to, so I have some sympathy with the need to be quite clear about ensuring that these are minimum rather than general standards and that they can be operated by all companies across the economy.
- Motion agreed.