Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Friday 15th July 2022
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
After such a smooth start, it is good to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. It provides me with an opportunity to thank you for and congratulate you on your flawless oversight and running of the private Members’ Bill ballot. Indeed, you showed impeccable taste even when picking numbers out of the hat. Seriously, however, you can be very pleased with the range of Bills before Parliament today.
I also welcome the new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), to her place and wish her well. I was grateful to meet her predecessor and his officials to discuss the Bill and work together on it, and I appreciate the new Minister having ensured that that work can continue in the week since her appointment. I hope that she is as enthusiastic about this Bill as both her predecessor and I am—I am sure she will be and, from our first discussions, I know that she definitely is.
We should all be enthusiastic about this brilliant Bill, which I know will make such a huge difference to tens of thousands of families each and every year. That is because it paves the way for the introduction of neonatal care leave and pay. I am grateful to all the hon. Members in the Chamber for being here to consider this proposal and, I very much hope, to support it. We will never be able to get rid of the stress, anxiety, doubts, questions and trauma that so many families experience when their baby is in neonatal care, but what we can and must do is help to relieve some of the practical and financial challenges that accompany that experience.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I am delighted to see the Bill come to the Floor of the House, and I know that other hon. Members have sought to bring it previously and have done a huge amount of work in this area. I hope that the Government put their full weight behind it. My constituent Coady Dorman does a lot of work with Bliss, as my hon. Friend will know. She had a premature son, Matthew. He is now thriving, but she spoke about the months she spent going to see him in neonatal care and how different the experience was, and how different maternity leave was after that. She told of the stress and strain of having to worry about money all during that time. My hon. Friend’s Bill will, we hope, take away some of that stress.
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Hearing about those experiences is precisely what has prompted my bringing this Bill forward today. Campaigns groups such as Bliss and The Smallest Things, which I will come to in a moment, have really driven this forward. As she alluded to, there are Members in the Chamber today with personal experience of having a baby in neonatal care, which makes them the best advocates for this cause so I am grateful for their participation. Many of them, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), have been passionate and articulate campaigners for reform for a considerable time.
I am pleased to say that we are joined in the Gallery today by people from Bliss and The Smallest Things, representing families who have direct experience of the challenges around neonatal care; I am immensely grateful to them and so many other organisations and individuals for their help and support in taking this Bill forward and for the campaign they have been driving since long before I was elected to this place. I hope that the families with lived experience of neonatal care who are watching today will be satisfied that we have represented the issues they have faced, and are facing now, with the careful consideration and compassion they deserve.
The Office for National Statistics reports that an estimated 100,000 babies every year across the UK are admitted to neonatal care following their birth. Many of those babies spend prolonged periods of time on a neonatal care unit in a hospital as a result of being born prematurely or with other health conditions. That is, of course, an incredibly worrying and stressful time for parents, and their extended families. All our hearts go out to everyone who has found themselves in that position. Parents will naturally want to be able to focus their attention simply on getting through that period, supporting each other and their newborn. There is an emotional imperative to be with their babies, but there is also a practical one: those vulnerable, little children need their parents, and those parents need to be with their wee ones. As the charity Bliss has highlighted,
“parental presence on a neonatal unit is essential. Babies have the best developmental outcomes when their parents can deliver hands-on care.”
However, some families struggle to do that while keeping in employment and earning a living. Fathers get two weeks of statutory paternity leave. That is good, but when those two weeks run out, they must be called back to work while their baby is still in hospital. How can any parent be expected to focus at work while their sick baby is undergoing life-saving, life-changing neonatal care?
When babies have an extended stay in hospital at the start of their life, mothers report that 39 weeks of paid maternity leave does not give them enough time. That gets used up during the neonatal care and they do not feel that they have enough time at home with their baby before they need to go back to work. Some mothers may choose to leave work as a result. Indeed, research by The Smallest Things shows that one in 10 mothers were not able to return to work due to the ongoing needs of their babies who had required neonatal care.
That research also highlights two incredibly concerning statistics, which are perhaps unsurprising given the emotional trauma of a baby being born premature or sick. The charity reports that 77% of parents said they experienced anxiety after neonatal care, and that nearly a quarter had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after neonatal intensive care. In short, The Smallest Things concludes that we need to strengthen the statutory rights and support offered to these parents because that
“would give parents the emotional and financial support needed at a time of great stress and trauma – in turn leading to better postnatal health, a more positive return to work and better outcomes for children born prematurely.”
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I commend my hon. Friend for bringing forward this really important Bill. I got in a taxi the other day that was driven by one of his constituents who said that his baby had spent nearly three months in hospital having been born prematurely. His employer was not at all helpful, so he had to go back to work after his two weeks’ paternity leave. It was incredibly stressful—everything my hon. Friend is talking about rings really true—and he ended up having to leave that employment because being with his wife and baby was far more important. That is why the Bill is so important for families.
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. There are employers out there who already provide this support for their employees, and they are to be commended. Unfortunately, though, as we have heard, there are too many who do not. Sometimes fathers are forced to use sick pay for extended periods, which is far from ideal, and on other occasions, as we have just heard, people are forced back to work.
At an incredibly distressing time when these families need each other the most, we should be doing what we can to support them and allow them to spend that precious and vital time with their babies. As Bliss has highlighted, the main reason why parents on maternity leave return to work before they are ready, and why parents taking paternity leave return to work while their baby is still in neonatal care, is financial pressure.
Bliss estimates that the additional cost of a neonatal stay is around £250 per week by the time we factor in travel costs, buying food and drink at the hospital, extra childcare, and even accommodation costs if the hospital is far from home. That is obviously a significant financial burden, and I am very glad that it was recognised by the Scottish Government when they established the neonatal expenses fund—now the young patients family fund—in 2018.
The Bill will create a new statutory leave and pay entitlement for the parents of babies receiving neonatal care. Employed parents who find themselves in this immensely challenging situation in the future will know that, as a minimum, they are entitled to time off work to care for their babies, and that they will not suffer any repercussions as a result. Crucially, the Bill will allow parents to have protected time off work to care for their children at such a difficult time.
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing the Bill forward. I want to express how I much I support what he is trying to do. As somebody who was employed when my wife, who is also a constituent of Broxtowe, had our twin children, who were six weeks premature and one of whom spent three weeks in neonatal care, I strongly support the hon. Gentleman’s Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald
As I said, the best arguments come from those with direct experience—they are the most powerful advocates—so I am really grateful to the hon. Gentleman for staying behind this morning and lending his support.
As I said in response to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), there are some brilliant, supportive and flexible employers out there, such as those who are signed up to The Smallest Things’ “Employer with Heart” charter. I take this opportunity to commend them and ask them to continue to support their employees when these circumstances occur. However, we all know that there are employers who are not as forward thinking—some cannot afford to be—and it is those employers, and the parents who work for them, that we will need particularly to consider when introducing the provisions of the Bill. In short, that is why neonatal care, leave and pay entitlement is not just desirable, but essential to protect and support parents at this very difficult time.
Let me explain to the House in a bit more detail what the Bill and the powers it sets up are designed to achieve. Much of the framework and terminology borrows from other related statutory rights ensuring consistency, compatibility and, hopefully, ease of implementation. I am grateful to parliamentary counsel for their work in drafting the Bill to reflect the important policy goals. Neonatal care, leave and pay will apply to parents of babies who are admitted into hospital at the age of up to 28 days and who have a continuous stay in hospital or in other agreed care settings of seven full days or more. It is intended that eligible parents will be able to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave on top of their other parental entitlements, such as maternity or paternity leave. Neonatal care leave will be a day one right—available to an employee from their first day in a new job. Statutory neonatal care pay, like other family-related pay rights, would be available to those employees who meet continuity of service and a minimum earning test.
Parents will have an entitlement to up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave—one week for every week that the child spends in neonatal care. That leave will be protected, and a person should not suffer any form of detriment due to taking that leave. As I have said, statutory neonatal care pay will be available to employees who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests, and it will be paid at the statutory rate, which is currently £156.66 or 90% of the employee’s average wages, whichever is lower, and that should be uprated in line with increases to statutory payments. That mirrors the existing family leave in pay provisions such as paternity, shared parental, adoption and maternity pay after the first six weeks. Employers will be able to reclaim spending on neonatal pay in a manner similar to other statutory payments.
It is expected that some parents, such as fathers who have only two weeks of paternity leave, may want to take their neonatal leave while their child is still in neonatal care. However, once maternity leave commences, a mother cannot stop it to take neonatal care leave, or she will lose her remaining maternity leave rights. Neonatal care leave will therefore be flexible so that mothers can add it to the end of their maternity leave and other forms of parental leave that they may be entitled to. That flexibility allows an employee to take the leave at a time that best suits them when their child is receiving or has received neonatal care. With that in mind, the Bill provides for the window of time within which neonatal care leave can be taken to be set out in regulations. That will be a minimum of 68 weeks following the child’s birth, ensuring that mothers and fathers have sufficient time to take their neonatal care leave alongside other leave rights that they may be entitled to, rather than having to lose out on any such entitlements.
I do not aim to persuade Members that every single aspect of the design of the scheme is perfect—of course there are arguments that it might not be. There are debates to be had about statutory rights and entitlements and support for the self-employed or workers who are not technically employees. We can debate whether neonatal pay, like leave, should be a day one right. Some might ask whether we should raise levels of statutory entitlements. While 12 weeks of leave and pay will cover the overwhelming majority of cases, others might ask if we can go further.
First, it is important to remember that the Bill and the regulations will set out minimum standards for neonatal leave and pay. Employers can and do already go beyond them, and we encourage them to continue to do that. In any event, while those are all fair questions and issues, they are for another day and relate to statutory rights more generally, not the principle behind introducing this new right.
Today, I hope we will take a significant step forward in expanding the range of statutory family rights to leave and pay—a step that will make a big difference to tens of thousands of families every year for generations to come. There is overwhelming support for this change from families, trade unions, health professionals and employers, and Members of Parliament from all corners of the House support it, too. Indeed, it is a rare and remarkable Bill that will at one and the same time deliver on a specific manifesto commitment of the Conservative party and the SNP.
No more should we be leaving parents to use up maternity and paternity leave travelling great distances to a neonatal ward. There should be no more forcing fathers back to work after two weeks with their newborn still on a ventilator, separating families at a crucial time, no more leaving mum to cope on a neonatal ward facing significant decisions alone and no more depriving babies in neonatal units of the support of both their parents. There should be no more making parents choose unnecessarily between being with their newborn baby in hospital and being able to secure an income through work. This Bill will help thousands of parents each year to spend more precious time with their premature and sick babies, so we need this Bill to succeed for them.
To conclude, I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House share my desire to ensure that the Bill succeeds. Collectively, we have an opportunity to effect real change. It is our duty to ensure that those who will have to rely on such provision are fully able to do so.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
I am genuinely delighted to rise to support the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill. For me, as for other hon. Members and many families around the country, this is much more consequential than any political debate happening this week that might be receiving more attention. I could not be happier that we are here at Second Reading.
I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for bringing forward the Bill and for introducing it in the way that he did. He spoke eloquently about some of the challenges facing parents, he outlined why the Bill is important, and he took us through some of its important elements. I know that he understands how important it is to many people. I also thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for championing the Bill as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies, and for helping us ensure that it got to Second Reading today.
Every year in the UK, tens of thousands of babies receive neonatal care. For the families of those babies, as we have heard, that can be life-changing. Neonatal care is the type of care that a child receives in hospital if they are born premature, at full term but with a condition or illness that needs medical attention, or with a particularly low birth weight. Rather than the families bringing their child home shortly after birth, the child is admitted to a specialist neonatal intensive care unit to receive the support that ensures that they have the best possible chance of survival—in some cases—and of quality of life.
There is a huge wealth of evidence that suggests that the more time that a parent spends with their child in NICU from as early as possible, the better their chances and outcomes. Crucially, this Bill will allow parents to take additional time off work when their child is in neonatal intensive care to ensure that they are no longer in the ridiculous and impossible position of having to choose between keeping their job or spending time with their child.
Once the Bill is enacted, neonatal leave and pay will be available to employees whose child spends more than one week on a NICU. It will provide up to 12 weeks’ paid leave for qualifying parents. Currently, parents of a child in neonatal care rely on the existing statutory requirements that we have already heard about so they can be off work with their child in hospital, which means that parents spend a proportion of their maternity or paternity leave with their child in hospital.
Babies who have spent a long time in hospital after birth are, of course, at an earlier stage in their development when their parent has to go back to work compared with their peers. That is particularly challenging for lots of mothers who want to spend that extra time at home with their child and for fathers and non-child-bearing parents who often go back to work when their child is still in hospital, sometimes still on ventilation and being fed through a tube. It is completely unacceptable. All that has only ever led in one direction: reduced parental involvement, huge pressure on families and a reduced opportunity for bonding at an early stage.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for bringing this important Bill to the House. It has such great support. My hon. Friend touches on an important point. My constituent got in touch about her experience when her child was in neonatal care. Her husband forwent his parental leave until after the baby came out of hospital, so that he could spend time with the baby at home. Those missing weeks really make a difference to the bonding and matter to the parents and the child, so I welcome the Bill.
Luke Hall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because it only leads in one direction—parents being with their children less in hospital—and the main reason for that is simply that parents cannot afford to take the time off work. That is happening to the families of premature children every single day up and down the country.
For me, as for many other families and hon. Members present, this is personal. In my family’s case, I remember my wife being admitted to hospital 22 weeks into her pregnancy. She was told that she could give birth at any time and that she would have to stay in hospital for the duration of her pregnancy. We had to wait day by day hoping that she would stay in hospital and the pregnancy would continue.
I remember hoping that the late-night phone calls from the hospital at 2 o’clock in the morning were bringing good news rather than bad. I remember the incredible day that he was born at just 28 weeks. He weighed 2.4 lb—he was absolutely tiny—and stayed in NICU for 72 of the longest days I could possibly describe before coming home. It is important to say this, because, for so many families of premature children, this is a very, very long journey. It does not start the day the child is born. It does not start the first day or the eighth day; it starts often months beforehand. There is a huge mental toll, as we have heard already, on parents when they are in NICU with their child. We know that the mental health of the majority of parents suffers. Of course it does.
Parents, whatever the circumstances, want to be with their children when they are born. That is completely natural, but when your child is so small and so vulnerable, it is painful to be apart from them. You just want to be there. Too many parents have to sit with their children while they are in incubation worrying about whether they can afford to pay the bus fare home. We cannot allow that to continue and this Bill will play an important part in stopping that happening.
People were delighted when numerous parties made the manifesto commitment to introduce neonatal leave and pay. I would have loved this to be delivered two years ago through a Government Bill, but—I have to be honest—that does not matter to me today. All that matters is that the Government embrace this as the opportunity to deliver this important commitment that we have made with open arms.
On the Bill itself, I want to thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and the Government for the way they have worked with us so far on this. I also thank the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who gave so much time to talk to us about finding a vehicle to introduce this. I know that the new Minister will take up the cause with equal vigour.
I want to raise a couple of points. The first is the timing of the introduction of the Bill. The normal practice would be for it to be introduced at the start of a new financial year. Back in March 2020 in the Budget, the Government committed to introduce the measure in the 2023-24 financial year and set the funding aside for it. To meet that, in what is now an incredibly challenging timescale, the Bill needs to pass through Parliament quickly. Will the Minister talk in her wind-up about the proposed introduction date and whether we can still meet the 2023 target? I believe that there is precedent for Bills getting done quickly. It is important because, if we introduce the measure in 2024 rather than 2023, we will needlessly leave thousands more parents in the situation for a year longer than is necessary.
We had conversations with the previous Minister for quite a long time about making sure that the background work continued while we tried to find a vehicle to deliver the measure. In December last year, the Minister assured me that the Department was working with HMRC and drafting the guidance for businesses, making sure that HMRC’s IT systems were ready and everything else. Will the Minister update us on how that work is progressing and whether the guidance will be ready on time?
My second point is perhaps more technical and more for Committee. I saw that the qualifying period was seven days, which was completely expected, but that the seven days start the day after birth. That is a point that we can discuss later during the passage of the Bill; it seems a tiny bit at odds with some of the ways in which the neonatal care days are recorded, certainly in England—I am not sure about other parts of the UK.
Delivering neonatal leave and pay will help thousands of babies born needing neonatal care to benefit from their parents being where they should be—by their side providing the hands-on care that is so vital. It will deliver support for thousands of parents who need it during the most difficult days of their lives. I am hugely grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for choosing this Bill and delivering it the way that he did and to the Government for backing it. The Bill is uncontroversial and has cross-party support. We have waited for it for a long time. I am hugely proud to be here to support its passage. It will help to deliver on our promise to so many families.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). When I told him that he had come top of the private Member’s Bills ballot, he thought that I was just someone who was interested, notwithstanding what happened earlier. It was actually because I was so keen to see this Bill come forward. This is a Bill that I sought to introduce in 2018 via the ten-minute rule. It is a testament to how generous and warm my hon. Friend is that he has been presented with this opportunity by winning the parliamentary lottery. Many of us would like to see the private Member’s Bill process reformed, but I am incredibly grateful to him and will be forever in his debt that he has taken the Bill on.
Like my hon. Friend, I pay tribute to the former Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). He and I have been discussing and meeting about this issue. I have questioned him on the Floor of the House for a very long time about it. It became clear that, in the absence of an employment Bill, the most sensible way of dealing with it, particularly given the cross-party support we have, was to decouple it and take this as a stand-alone Bill. I am glad we are going down that route.
I would like to pay tribute to and recognise a few other people, particularly Catriona Ogilvy from The Smallest Things, and Josie Anderson and Beth McCleverty from Bliss. I have been working with them for years on this, and the fact that we are finally seeing the Bill go through the House is a point of enormous pride. It is the culmination of many years of work by not just MPs, which I will come to in a moment, but, most importantly, parents whose children are born premature or sick.
This is actually politics at its best. It is no secret that I am not a fan of this place, and I do everything every single day to try to get out of here, but if the House will indulge me for one moment, this is probably one of the best moments we have had here, because we are seeing politicians coming together, putting party politics aside and using their personal experience.
One of the reasons the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies works so well is that the officers of that group all have one thing in common. It is not the fact that they are Members of Parliament; it is that they are the parents of premature and sick-born babies. I want to thank the hon. Members for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) and for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), and the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) and for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who have come together to put party politics and indeed constitutional politics aside to ensure that we do deliver for those families.
This Bill is not particularly controversial. It is a relatively short Bill and the budget line only commits to about £15 million, as the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate said, in the 2023 Budget, but it will have a massive impact on the families of those 90,000 to 100,000 babies who every year are born in the UK and spend time in neonatal care.
As the House will recall, both of my children—Isaac and Jessica—were born premature. In Isaac’s case, we only had about 14 weeks from finding out that he was going to arrive to his coming into the world. I still remember that moment when it moved to an emergency caesarean and being whipped away to a neonatal intensive care unit, and the real worry going through that time. In both cases—for both my children—my parental leave was well up by the time we got out of hospital. In the case of my daughter Jessica, who is now three years old, she spent roughly the first year of her life on oxygen and many weeks and months in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate hit the nail on the head when he talked about the mental health impact that this has on parents. I still remember vividly, and will until my dying day, watching my daughter turn blue in the incubator, with noises, alarms and lights all going off and neonatal nurses rushing in to resuscitate her. The idea that we as legislators would expect our constituents to be at work when that is happening or, worse still, to do a shift after that is something we are putting right today, because that is a historical wrong.
There is also the point that employers will not get the best out of their employees when they are sitting at work and staring into space, worrying whether or not their child is going to make it through the day. They are also not going to be in a good space when they realise that mum is back in the neonatal intensive care ward and doctors are coming round to talk about the massive consequential decisions that families have to take, while the dad, or another parent perhaps, is sitting in front of a computer in the office. That is why this is so important.
There are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has said, good employers out there already: Sony Music, Waltham Forest Council, South Ayrshire Council all have innovative policies in place. Interestingly, we have a big debate in this House about proxy voting. As far as I understand it, proxy voting still does not have provision for neonatal care leave. Although there will be a period before we can get Royal Assent, this House could get its own house in order by ensuring that we have some form of neonatal leave immediately with proxy voting.
Hannah Bardell
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent work he has done over many years on this issue. My own chief of staff, Stephanie, had her twin girls—Abi and Jessica—during the deepest, darkest lockdown of the winter of 2020. She had the pressure of having two premature babies, being quite ill and having to go in and out of the neonatal unit. So much of what he says rings true, and I hope I did what I could as an employer, but I felt that my hands were tied by the rules of this place. I remember trying to give her all the support I could, but her partner worked offshore and had to go back offshore; he could not even be in the same place as her after that. Does my hon. Friend agree that everything he says and everything this Bill brings forward will be so important to our constituents, our staff and staff the length and breadth of the country? It should not be left up to individual businesses to make policies; this needs to be in legislation.
David Linden
My hon. Friend makes a good point. As well as reforming some of the issues around proxy voting in this place, which I accept impacts only a small amount of us, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which is responsible for setting many of the policies and conditions on how Members of the House employ staff, could do a lot more not just on guidance but to reform the rules.
There are a number of good employers out there—I have mentioned them already—but one thing we saw as a result of the P&O scandal is that, sadly, far too many employers are too tempted to gild the lily, cut corners and undercut their staff. I am conscious that there is cross-party consensus this morning, but I will not depart from the belief that the sooner we have an employment Bill before the House, the better so we could try to deal with some of the other issues, such as the excellent proposition on miscarriage leave made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley). It is important that the Minister considers how we could bring forward an employment Bill. However, ultimately, this Bill will end the lottery that far too many employees across these islands have to deal with. I agree with the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate about the need to expedite the Bill. I still have a concern that, although the Bill will be read a Second time today, we should get it into Committee as soon as possible, and to the Lords. My preference would be to do all stages on the Floor of the House. There is precedent for that. Given the immense cross-party agreement on this, we could get the Bill through in a couple of hours.
I put a direct challenge to whoever the two final candidates are for Prime Minister. I understand that whoever becomes Prime Minister will be enormously tempted to call a snap election. The danger with doing that is that the House would prorogue and the Bill would not receive Royal Assent. I would like a commitment from both candidates that they will not play fast and loose with that.
There are many more things that we can do to try to support families who have had premature or sick babies. We need to look at the neonatal workforce. That is a ticking time bomb that will go off in about 10 years’ time. We need to look at the school admissions code, certainly in England, and look across the UK at the poor hospital accommodation for parents. Far too many parents have to stay in hotels well off site. That is particularly challenging for mothers who are breastfeeding and there are all sorts of other issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East referred to the neonatal expenses fund that we have in Scotland. We are incredibly lucky to have that, but it is not available to our friends in other parts of these islands.
Finally, we will have to look at the postcode lottery and the desert of counselling that exists across health boards and NHS trusts. It has been well rehearsed this morning that having a baby who is born premature or sick can have a serious detrimental impact on the mental health of parents and frankly it is just luck whether they get that support at that time. I very much look forward to the Bill going to Committee, ensuring that it passes through the House speedily and can receive Royal Assent. I commend it to the House.
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on this important Bill. As chair of the all-party group on maternity, I know all too well that more support is needed for parents and babies in neonatal care, including statutory pay and leave. I am proud that the UK already has a range of policies in place to support parents to balance work and family life, including family-related leave and pay entitlements, the right to request flexible working, and protections from detriment for parents seeking or taking time off work to care for their families. However, it has become increasingly clear through national consultations and my work chairing the all-party group that we should be offering even more support to parents whose babies are in neonatal care. That was a key pledge in our 2019 manifesto and I am delighted to support the Bill.
Although I do not have a neonatal care unit in my constituency, our midwives at the Rowan suite in Hartlepool are superb. They are some of the most caring and loving people I know. Still, no care, however brilliant, can truly beat that provided by parents themselves. Parents whose babies are in neonatal care should be able to spend as much time as possible by their baby’s side. Holding them in their arms, feeling that tiny heartbeat, stroking the first hairs on their head should not be overshadowed by worries about work and pay. We all know that this skin-to-skin contact in the first weeks following birth is essential to ensuring better outcomes for babies and their parents. Long periods of direct care by parents can improve breastfeeding rates, increase weight gain, improve infant reflexes, lead to better motor development, and reduce pain during invasive procedures.
However, too many parents are excluded from that direct care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said—I thank them for sharing their emotional stories—it is a particular problem for fathers. With only two weeks of paternity leave available, 66% of fathers have to return to work long before their babies are well enough to come home. In fact, in around 70% of families with a significant neonatal stay, one parent had to return to work while their baby was still being cared for in hospital—often in another city many miles away.
Although mothers are entitled to longer leave than fathers, many mothers also have to return to work before they should. This is because mothers whose babies are in neonatal care use weeks or months of their maternity leave while they are still in the hospital. When their baby comes home, mothers may only have a few weeks with their baby before their statutory maternity pay comes to an end. It is simply not right that mothers must return to the workplace when their baby has only just left neonatal care.
However, this is about more than parents’ financial worries; it is about addressing the emotional trauma a parent goes through when their baby is seriously unwell and in neonatal care. As many as 80% of parents report that their mental health deteriorated after their neonatal experience. They deserve our full support, which I believe this Bill will offer. No parent should be forced back into the workplace when their baby is in neonatal care. The financial and emotional stresses caused by the current system cannot go on. I join colleagues across the House in supporting this Bill, and I hope that mothers and fathers across the country will be reassured by the contributions in today’s debate.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on securing this private Member’s Bill and on deciding to use the opportunity to introduce legislation on such an important subject.
The Bill makes provision for dedicated leave and pay for employees with responsibility for children receiving neonatal care. I hope it will receive cross-party support as the policy is long overdue. I am sure Members from all parties will be familiar with the situation, either through personal circumstances, as outlined by some hon. Members this morning, or family, and many constituents will also be affected by the current lack of financial support and security.
Parents in this situation currently have to spend a proportion of their maternity or paternity leave with the baby in hospital. Compared with their peers, babies who have to spend a long time in hospital after birth are usually at an earlier stage in their development when their mother or parents go back to work. That can be particularly upsetting for mothers, many of whom would like additional time with their child but cannot afford to take any more time off work. This initiative therefore has my strongest support.
Leave and pay for those with responsibility for children in neonatal care represent one crucial element in a wider response to the needs of these children and their parents. Before I consider the benefits of implementing such a policy, let me say a few words about the other essential element. Getting the best results depends largely on parents’ ability to take time to be with their baby when it is most vulnerable, in hospital-based neonatal units and services. In February 2019, the then Scottish Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman MSP, visited Crosshouse Hospital in East Ayrshire, only a few miles from my constituency. She was there to announce the launch of a Scottish Government initiative, backed by £12 million of dedicated funding, to testing a new model for neonatal careful. The scheme offers all expectant mums care from a primary midwife, alongside a small team, for their entire maternity journey. Support will be on hand to help parents with babies in neonatal units to provide as much day-to-day care for their newborn babies as possible. In March 2019, the scheme was welcomed by this House in an early-day motion tabled by SNP MPs. The Bill will build on that good work in Scotland and provide benefits for mothers, fathers, siblings and extended families across the United Kingdom.
After decades of falling neonatal mortality rates among all socioeconomic groups, we are now seeing a deeply worrying rising trend among the more deprived groups, which began two or more years after the UK Government’s austerity policies were first implemented. SNP MPs at Westminster have long been aware of the even greater impact of austerity policies in England, where the lack of mitigating actions of the kind implemented by the Scottish Government has resulted in even greater levels of poverty, particularly child poverty.
The scale of demand for neonatal care is considerable. According to Bliss—the leading charity whose vision is for every baby born prematurely or sick in the United Kingdom to have the best chance of survival and quality of life—more than 90,000 babies are cared for in neonatal units in the United Kingdom every year. Neonatal units and the services they offer are fundamental to the care of vulnerable children, but parents cannot always fully utilise them unless they are supported by a dedicated leave and pay entitlement that enables them to afford to do so.
My hon. Friend’s proposal recognises that a critical element of making a success of neonatal care is parents’ ability to take advantage of existing highly skilled and professional neonatal units. However, there are wider benefits. Research in 2018 showed that 80% of parents who have had a child admitted to neonatal intensive care feel that their mental health suffered, while 35% of parents report that there was a significant impact on their mental health. The inability to afford to be with their child in the neonatal unit for the full time is a major factor in those outcomes. The costs for those individuals personally and the impact on employment and family can be immense. Many thousands of families are affected.
The Bill is of considerable importance to the most vulnerable in our society. It will help families at one of the most difficult times in their lives and will demonstrate that as a country we recognise the value of providing support to parents and families who need it at the most emotionally difficult time for them. It has my strongest support and I hope that it will receive the full support of the House.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on introducing this hugely important Bill. It has been about four and a half years since I last spoke from the Back Benches; it feels a little unfamiliar, but it is right that I am doing it on a sitting Friday for private Members’ Bills. One of the great benefits of having recently become an ex-Minister is that I have the opportunity to speak in debates like this one and put my support behind such excellent private Members’ Bills.
It is perhaps somewhat surprising, but I welcome the fact that the Scottish National party is helping to implement a Conservative manifesto commitment for us. I do not think that that would happen very often, but it is a testament to this House’s ability to come together around issues that really matter. When people watch proceedings of this House such as Prime Minister’s questions, they often see the combative nature of politics. I encourage many more people to watch sitting Fridays, when the House comes together to deliver outcomes and legislation that genuinely make a difference to people’s lives. That is one reason why I am very pleased to be here today.
Another reason is the persuasive skills of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who does an amazing job of encouraging all Members who are able to come in on a Friday to contribute to important debates such as this one. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) to her place on the Front Bench; I very much hope that she will be there for many years to come.
The context of the Bill was ably set out by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. One in seven babies requires neonatal care of some sort, and 50,000 babies a year require neonatal care in hospital for more than a week, so the need is stark. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a number of other factors—for example, the need to look at the support and accommodation available to families in hospital settings, including simple things such as catering facilities. I encourage my successor in the Department of Health and Social Care to bear that in mind as we look to build new hospitals and upgrade others.
The Bill goes to the heart of what is hugely important to these families, too many of whom are asked to choose between their livelihoods, work and obligations, and their time with their child. This debate reminds me of the debates we had on what is now the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, which those who were Members of the House back in 2017 and 2018 will remember. In those debates, we talked about the fact that many businesses do the right thing and make support available, even though they are not compelled by statute to go as far as we will hopefully move towards today, but some do not, which is why it is right that we legislate through this Bill to put that right and fill the gap.
The Bill reminds me not only of those debates, but of our debates on the children’s funeral fund, for which the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) campaigned. I was the Minister who put that in place. Again, that provision is hugely important. The two measures that I have outlined are in place for when the worst happens. Thankfully, today we are talking not about the worst happening, but about babies who need more neonatal care in hospital. However, there is a common theme that runs through the pieces of legislation that are already in place and this Bill: giving parents the time and space to be parents, to be with their children and to process what is going on, without at the same time having to worry constantly about what is happening to their job or their family finances.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Member for all the help he gave me when he was a Minister; I am really grateful. I pledge my support to the Bill, because during lockdown I was blessed with two grandsons, and the provisions in the Bill would have made a huge difference to my daughter Angharad and her husband Ciaran—who we call “Shaky”, but that is another story!
Edward Argar
It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with the hon. Lady on a number of issues during my stint in the Department of Health. That goes to the heart of what I said about how much we can achieve in the House—how much is often not seen outside the House—by working across the Chamber, making changes that are often small but that genuinely make a huge difference to people’s lives.
We have heard that there is already a degree of statutory support available, such as the ability to request flexible working, which is welcome, but it does not go far enough and it does not address the challenge of businesses that choose not to do the right thing, not to be flexible and not to support such families.
I hugely welcome what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has brought before the House. Of course there are details to be worked out, and I hope that can be done speedily and efficiently in Committee. I am happy to volunteer to the hon. Gentleman that if I am still on the Back Benches when the time comes—in anticipation of a possible longer stint on the Back Benches—I would be happy to serve on the Committee for this important piece of legislation. It is hugely important: no family or parent should be forced to choose, or feel forced to choose, between having the space to be with their child in neonatal care, and their livelihood and job, yet there are currently parents who have to make that choice every day. That cannot be right, which is why I hugely welcome the hon. Gentleman’s Bill. I look forward to supporting the Bill today and, should he so wish, to serving on the Bill Committee to help ensure that we get the legislation on to the statute book as quickly as possible.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am delighted to be considering this important private Member’s Bill this morning and I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald)— [Interruption.] I am sorry; I have honestly practised saying “Kirkintilloch East”—for bringing it forward. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). While the Conservative party occupies the Treasury Bench, I think it is time for him to be back on the Front Bench, because we cannot do without his talent. He is a massively respected Member and it would be good to see him back where he belongs.
I will not keep the House long, but I want to put my support on the record. A friend of mine gave birth to a very premature little girl some years ago, and I know she stayed with that little girl in hospital day in and day out until she was ready to leave hospital. I know that that time was truly precious, but I also know that it was terrifying. Thankfully, Esme is now doing really well: she is a tiny little dot with the hugest smile and so much energy and life. She just has a zest for life that is a joy to behold. She is thoroughly engaging and she is doing so very well at school, despite being the youngest and, I am sure, the tiniest in her class.
However, if Esme’s mum had not been able to stay there day in and day out, I am not sure the prognosis would have been as positive as it has been. I want to make sure that all families get to be there for their little ones when their little ones need them most. As we have heard, every year tens of thousands of babies are born prematurely or sick and need to remain in hospital. Of course their parents want to stay with them and have a say in their care. They just want to be with them, but right now we know that there are parents who want to stay with their baby but cannot, because their employer simply does not get it or because they cannot afford to take time off work and lose essential income.
As we have heard, according to the charity Bliss, for every week their baby is in hospital, parents end up having to spend an extra £282 on average. We all know that for many people that is simply not possible without incurring a huge and debilitating debt. It is not right that parents have to take sick leave instead of neonatal leave, because taking sick leave when they are not sick comes with a certain stigma. Frankly, employers do not like it, because they cannot reclaim statutory sick pay, so it costs them money.
Taking sick leave also disincentivises employers from doing the right thing and offering paid neonatal care. We need to keep in mind that these mums, dads, other carers and relatives are going through hell. I really hope that today we will do all we can to ease some of the terrible pressure they are under and support their right to paid leave. Across this House we often talk about giving children the best start in life, equal opportunities and levelling up. If we mean what we say and we truly want to give newborn babies the best start in life, we need to make sure that their parents can be there in the hospital with them to develop that early bond. We need to make sure that parents, including dads, can maintain skin-to-skin contact with their babies, which is so important for development and bonding. We all know how damaging and traumatic it can be to separate a child from its parents at such an early age, and we know that a major way of looking after children is by helping out their parents in these crucial times. For those who have to cope with the additional strain of a child in hospital and the terror, the trauma, that goes with having a sick or premature baby, additional support is so desperately needed. If we want them to have the best chance of keeping their family together, of supporting each other and of enabling their child’s healthy emotional education and social development, we have to give them time with their baby.
A law to allow paid leave for neonatal care has been a long time coming, so I hope the Government will honour their commitment to introducing paid leave for neonatal care by ensuring the smooth and quick passage of this Bill.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member on his Bill. I will not attempt to say the name of his constituency, but I would love to visit one day.
I will not speak for too long, but I will address some of the points that have been raised. First, I endorse this Bill and will do all I can to support its passage. This is such an important issue. We heard earlier about personal experience, and the personal experiences of my friends who have had to use neonatal care, including my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), really touch one’s heart. Those precious moments, from our child’s first seconds, are embedded in our souls, our minds and our memories.
Thankfully, my daughter did not need neonatal care, but those moments—the nine months leading up to her birth, and the seconds after she was born—are seared into me. They create tears, memories and hopes for the future. I cannot imagine what it must be like, in those first few weeks, for a parent to be stuck at work when they want to be with their child at their most precious, most vulnerable and most fragile. All a parent would want is just to be there to support them and, even if they cannot hug them, to know that they are close enough to do so.
For me, this Bill is much more than just legislation. It is about doing the right thing and it is about compassion. I came into politics because I believe in people and because I believe in a compassionate society. We sometimes disagree in this House on how we get there, but this is one issue on which we can come together.
My daughter was born in my constituency at Watford General Hospital, which has a neonatal unit, and during the pandemic I did voluntary work in the maternity unit’s filing area. I had not realised how much work the staff do behind the scenes before a child is born, and in the following weeks, to make sure they are safe. The neonatal period is intense. There is so much happening, and so many moments that require a rapid reaction. Again, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for a parent to be away from their baby as they wait, listen and hang on for a phone call or message to find out if everything is going to be okay.
I absolutely endorse this Bill, and I wish the hon. Member the best of luck today. The Minister is doing a fantastic job in her first week, and I urge her to support the Bill’s passage to leave a legacy. Generations to come will talk about this day for many years.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies, and as someone whose family has had experience of these matters, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on choosing paid neonatal care leave as the subject of his Bill, and on putting the case so well and so fully. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), the chair of the all-party group, for all his campaigning on an issue which, as we have heard, is also very personal to him.
Given that the Government are supportive and are also keen to get through a number of Bills today, I will not seek to repeat the arguments that have been made so forcefully by the hon. Members for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans), the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)—he nearly put the kibosh on the Bill by claiming that it was fulfilling a Conservative manifesto commitment, but we will gloss over that for now—the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) who has my sympathy; the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East is indeed a mouthful, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), and, obviously, none more so than my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East. Instead, I will talk briefly about my family’s experience, and about the good luck that we had on so many levels.
My wife Lynn had pre-eclampsia during both her pregnancies. It was particularly acute during her first pregnancy, with our daughter Emma. The care that she received when she was eventually admitted was exemplary. I could not fault it; it was fantastic from start to finish. However, when my wife was first sent to hospital by her GP, having presented feeling nauseous and light-headed and with various other symptoms, she was not taken entirely seriously when she got there. Her blood pressure was up and down, and at one point her condition was diagnosed as “white coat syndrome” and she was sent home. But she knows her own body, and she did not feel right at all, so she made a phone call, went back to the hospital, and was eventually admitted.
Emma was born six and a half weeks early, in an emergency caesarean. Thankfully, she seemed healthy for a baby born so early, in comparison with many even smaller babies whose care was more critical and more urgent. She was certainly loud enough, although our youngest, Eilidh, has since managed to beat her quite convincingly on the decibel front. My ears can attest to the fact that that has not changed throughout the last nearly 16 years and 12 years respectively. They will be grateful for that!
Once Emma was born, my wife sent me straight back to work. My hon. Friend spoke of the choices that we are forced to face in these circumstances. My wife wanted my paternity leave to coincide with her arriving home from hospital with Emma, so that I could help around the house following her caesarean. As other Members have mentioned, it does not feel natural in the slightest to go back to work when a small, fragile baby girl is in an incubator and an exhausted wife is recovering from surgery, but back to work I went, because we do as we are told—sometimes.
Darren Henry
I am a former member of the all-party group, because the subject is important to me as well, but may I make a point about work and productivity? Does the hon. Gentleman believe that people who have been through this experience and have been afforded the necessary space will then go back to work and be more productive? Does he believe that other employees, seeing that happening, will feel that they need not make a choice between work and family, will see this as a compassionate society, and will do better work as a result?
Gavin Newlands
I could not agree more, but my productivity probably could not be measured in that way, because I had gone back to work. Having done so, I spoke with colleagues, receiving their congratulations and so on. Not long after my return, I was called into the office by my boss Thomas, who sent me straight back to the hospital, saying that my place was by Lynn’s side, supporting her. Moreover, he said that I was not to worry about leave or money, and I was given additional paid leave for as long as I required it. My wife’s boss similarly ensured that her maternity leave started at the originally planned date.
This was not policy, in either case; the additional leave was given at those bosses’ discretion. I want to thank Thomas Kelly and Steve Tomlin for their empathy and for their support. We were extremely lucky to have such empathetic bosses, but as others have said, it should not be down to luck.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I am here to support this Bill because of the experiences of my sister with my niece Erin, who was born three years ago. I looked after my nephew and other niece throughout that week.
The importance of this Bill, as my hon. Friend knows from his own experiences, is that it would alleviate somewhat the stress that people go through, because they would not have to worry about their leave or pay. Does he agree that that is one reason why the Bill needs to go through the House today?
Gavin Newlands
I certainly do, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend managed to get in just before my final sentence, not least because his sister went to the same school as me.
I hope that, despite the mayhem all around the Minister at the moment, she will see this paid leave rolled out as quickly as possible so that all parents are as lucky as we were.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
It is a real privilege to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on introducing the Bill—I hope I have got his constituency right. I am Scottish born and bred, so I should.
It has been very moving to hear the experiences of many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). I do not have children myself, but we all empathise with them in the traumatic experiences they have had. I speak on behalf of my constituents in saying that we think this Bill is simply the right thing to do.
On a personal basis, it is pleasing for me to speak in this debate because, until last week, I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so I was part of some of the discussions on the Bill. It is good to see it come to the Floor of the House. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who is going on to bigger and greater things. He was an exceptional Minister in BEIS, and he is compassionate and focused and has done great work on this topic. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), to her place, and I know she will do an exceptional job of carrying on that work.
I also pay tribute to the many charities that have been advocating for the Bill. Bliss has been mentioned on a number of occasions, but others such as The Smallest Things and Tommy’s have also been involved. I thank all the parents who have shared their individuals stories, because that has the most impact.
My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) put it so well: people should not be asked to choose between their livelihood and being with a very ill newborn child. The scale of this issue is large: I was surprised to read that one in seven children needs neonatal care, and more than 50,000 a year spend considerable time in neonatal care units. This is an ongoing problem, because 80% of those children need ongoing medical assistance and almost half end up back in neonatal care. This is not simply a one-off event.
There is no question that when a child is born prematurely or with major healthcare issues, the only place for the parents should be by their side. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) put it very well when she said that those first few days and weeks of close physical contact are so important for the development of a child. Also, critical decisions may have to be made while a baby is in neonatal care. Those can literally be life and death decisions, and the parents need to be there when they are being made. They should not be at work. They need to be there in real time, seeing the development of the child’s care. While all the medical staff do the most amazing job, there is nothing better than the focus of relatives and parents. I have seen that in other situations when I have visited family and friends in hospital. It is the care of the immediate relatives that can sometimes be so, so powerful.
I have talked about the scale of the problem, but I also want to talk about the intensity of the problem. These are some of the most traumatic moments that any parent will go through. My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate talked very powerfully about the mental health issues that parents may suffer. I was also quite surprised to read that 66% of fathers end up having to go back to work while their child is in neonatal care. That may have been okay 30 or 40 years ago, but I think we all now live in a world where we realise it is vital that both parents, whatever sex they may be, are very, very involved at the earliest stages of the care. That is very important.
What is also very important is that once the child comes out of neonatal care both mothers and fathers can spend time with the child. I heard a few weeks ago that a lot of parents end up using their maternity and paternity leave in the intensive care unit, and then, when the child goes home from the ICU, they immediately have to go back to work at that point and do not have the few weeks or months of bonding once the child is home. If your child has been in neonatal care—either because they have been incredibly premature or had serious health issues—you need that bonding time even more than if it were a normal healthy child.
Some people have asked, “Does this put too much of the burden on employers?” I argue that that is not the case. I started off by saying that as a society we need to do the right thing, and this is clearly the right thing, but employers also need to do the right thing. I argue that it is in the interests of employers to do the right thing. We are in an employment environment where it is incredibly difficult to hire good-quality talent, with the lowest unemployment rates since 1974, so it is in the economic interest of employers to provide good packages for employees, because they are in a war for talent and they can only secure the best talent if they are a humane, compassionate employer. Most employers will use discretion and do the right thing, but we should not be subject to an employer’s whims and their discretion. This needs to be in statute, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for introducing this important Bill. This is a Conservative manifesto pledge and we also had it in our March 2020 Budget, so it is good that it is coming to fruition in such a cross-party and co-operative manner.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that I very much welcome this legislation. It is the right thing to do and my constituents think it is the right thing to do. There is no question but that when someone has a child in neonatal care, the parents should be there too and not in work. They should be doing everything they can to support their baby at that time, and they should have the support of society.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Having observed that this Bill has total unanimity of support in the House, I do not think it compromises my usual impartiality if I seek to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East—it is quite easy to say that when you know how—on bringing forward such an excellent Bill. Having given birth to a premature baby one week after a general election, and in the middle of a Conservative leadership election, I can understand some of the stresses and strains that have been expressed this morning. Let us proceed, with Ruth Jones.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me and for indulging me this morning, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not going to speak in this debate but I have been so inspired by hearing everybody else that I feel that I must add my personal support, and that of my party, to the Bill. I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for bringing it forward, as it is so important. I also thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your eloquent words highlighting exactly why we are doing this.
As a former physiotherapist—I worked as a paediatric physio for many years—I am proud to say that I set up the physio service at what was the special care baby unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital in my constituency; obviously, it is now known as the neonatal intensive care unit. It was set up because the evidence was clear that parents need to be with their children at that stage when their babies are born. We are talking about babies born as young as 24 weeks, which gives them 16 weeks to get to the normal gestational age, so it is really important that parents are there from the very beginning. The scientific research, which I am proud to say I was partly involved with, shows just how important bonding with parents is at that age. We have heard eloquent speeches from others about the importance of breastfeeding, the weight gain and the calming ability of what physios would call “handling”, what we here would call “cuddles” and, obviously, what we in Wales we would call “cwtshys”. It is very important that these cwtshys are there, from mums and dads—we must not forget dads, as it is so important that they are able to be included.
We also need to remember what happens during the transition home. After perhaps 10 weeks having been spent in a very scientific and clinical area, taking that little precious baby home is very scary for parents. It is so important that dad is there with mum to support with that transition back. I endorse all the points made by other eloquent speakers in this debate, but I urge the Minister to do all she can to make sure that the Bill progresses, despite any turbulence we might be having because of leadership elections. It is really important that we get this Bill on the statute book to benefit parents and babies across the UK.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be responding to this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for bringing the Bill forward—[Interruption.] I think the trick is to say it quite fast. I also thank all my hon. Friends who are here to support it. I was glad to see the Bill top the ballot and the hon. Member take up the work, building on that of the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who, as he outlined, has been pressing for this for a long time and who talked about his own experience with Isaac and Jessica. He spoke powerfully, as a number of Members have today, based on his own experience.
Parents should not have to be at work or worrying about work when their child is in this situation. We heard from the hon. Members for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), for Glasgow East, and for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), as well as from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) who spoke about Esme, who sounds delightful, about just what parents have to go through.
When I visited the neonatal intensive care unit at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, it was just heartbreaking to see those tiny little babies in the incubators. Sadly in quite a few cases those children will not ever be going home with their parents, and I cannot think of anything worse than having to sit there watching a child with a very short life, almost waiting for it to die. In many cases, the kids do get to go home and it is brilliant to hear how they are thriving. Madam Deputy Speaker, I was very glad to hear you talk about your own experience. I think you are excused for speaking from the Chair on this occasion.
In a civilised society, we have a duty of care to people who are at an incredibly traumatic time in their lives. As I said, it must be heart-wrenching to be in that situation. We have heard from Bliss, and we all pay tribute to the charities involved in campaigning for this Bill. They are there to support the parents of babies who are born prematurely or ill. As we have heard, one in seven babies born in the UK receives some level of neonatal care shortly after birth. Thankfully, many do return home with their families after just a few days of care, but around 50,000 spend more than a week in neonatal care every year.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said that some employers are very understanding, but others are not. In some cases, it is not that they do not want to be, it is just that as a small employer it can be difficult to financially support parents in that situation, but this Bill will put everybody on an even footing. The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate talked about the ridiculous and impossible position that parents are put in when forced to choose between work and being with a child in hospital. He talked about his tiny son. When he said, “You just want to be there”, that is all it comes down to, and it is where parents should be. They should be able to put work completely out of their minds when in such a situation.
We have heard that some parents are put in an agonising position where they are forced back to work to cover their bills. That is particularly true for fathers and non-birthing partners who are entitled to just two weeks of paternity leave. It also affects mothers who run out of maternity leave if their babies end up having to have longer stays in hospital. Another issue is the after-care needed when families are at long last able to take their baby home—all these follow-up appointments and the checks on the babies’ health. It is worth mentioning that sometimes they will not be the first child or only child in the family. When my niece was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at a few weeks old, my sister had to balance trying to make sure that she was absolutely their priority, with the two older children who were only toddlers and needed help and support, too. Trying to juggle all that is just so difficult. In some cases it can be a lifelong commitment if the child has disabilities or continuing conditions. Even without those logistics of having to be in hospital or attend appointments, it is about emotionally wanting to just focus on that one thing.
We have heard a spirit of cross-party consensus today. When we were in government, I was the Friday Whip, and I have been here on many Fridays when there has been endless tedious filibustering. That is such an utter waste of time, and it is very difficult to explain to constituents who really want us to support Bills. When I found myself on Bench duty today, I was quite surprised that the Whip told me that we were hoping to get through quite a few Bills, and that we would be supporting them and hoping to get them into Committee. That is exactly how we ought to be working together.
I do not want to get too party political, but I will say that it is disappointing, given that neonatal leave and pay was a manifesto commitment, that we are having to rely on a private Member’s Bill to get to this stage. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), says, “It’s faster; that’s why we’re doing it,” but the Government consulted on this issue in the previous Parliament, and they said in their official response that Ministers remained committed to a new entitlement. They committed to it again in the “Good Work Plan”, they committed to legislation in the 2019 manifesto, and they were due to address it in the employment Bill, which has twice been trailed and then dropped from the legislative programme. The shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), said when it was dropped that that was an extraordinary move.
We are where we are. I hope that we can get the Bill through very quickly. Labour very much supports it. As we set out in our new deal for working people, we will give families the right to flexible working and to paid family and carers leave, and provide workers with greater ability to enforce those rights. As I said, I am pleased to see the spirit of co-operation today. I urge the House to give the Bill its Second Reading, and I hope that we can get it through Committee and see it become law as quickly as possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jane Hunt)
I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for bringing forward this important Bill, and I thank all hon. Members who have spoken on this important matter today. I am pleased to confirm that the Government will support the Bill.
As a mother myself, I know exactly how incredible that moment is when your baby is born. It is a time that should be full of joy and excitement. It must be devastating to see your baby whisked away and in need of urgent medical care, yet feel unable to do anything about it except be there. I can only offer my full support to all those who have experienced that.
That is why I am pleased to be here today and pleased to have taken on this important portfolio. I am deeply committed to ensuring that the UK is the best place in the world to work and grow a business. We need a strong and flexible labour market that supports participation and economic growth. I take this opportunity to thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—
Jane Hunt
Absolutely, and he is now a Minister of State at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I think hon. Members will agree that he is a committed and compassionate Minister, and I am pleased to be following him and moving this agenda forward—I will have to work very hard indeed to do so. I also thank the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies, and in particular its chair, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden).
Neonatal care leave and pay will enable thousands of parents to care for and be with their children in neonatal care without worrying about whether their job is at risk. I am pleased to see that the Bill has support across the House, as has been reflected in the debate—I thank everybody very much. I will take time to address some of the points raised by hon. Members, but first let me put on the record why the Government support the Bill.
As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East explained, every year in the UK, an estimated 100,000 babies are admitted to neonatal care following their birth, for a range of medical reasons. The United Kingdom has a range of generous entitlements and protections designed to support parents to balance their family and work commitments and maintain their place in the labour market while raising their children. However, for parents in the worrying position of having their newborn admitted to neonatal care, it is clear that the current leave and pay entitlements do not provide adequate support.
In an Adjournment debate on 9 February, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) said:
“The current system is also a massive barrier for fathers and non-childbearing parents in particular. Earlier this week, 75% of parents who responded to a survey from Bliss, the incredible charity, said that they or their partner went back to work before their baby was home from hospital. Some of those children will still have been on ventilation and receiving critical care. Previous research suggests that the most common reason for that is they simply cannot afford to take more time off work. That is happening every single day, right around the country, to families of premature and sick children.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 1054.]
That is why we are here today and have been able to come to an agreement. The Government have previously consulted on the issue. In March 2020, we committed to introducing a new entitlement to neonatal leave and pay. We are pleased to support the Bill, which will bring that policy into effect.
I will address some of the specific points that hon. Members have made. First, I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for bringing forward the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate for bringing his personal experience so emotionally and compassionately to the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) talked particularly about fathers. I absolutely support what she said about giving extra time to both parents to be there for their child. I will refer to some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) later.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East also talked movingly about his personal experience. The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) mentioned a specific case. My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) volunteered in his own Watford hospital—a legacy for all here today, hopefully, we will provide. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) referred to his personal experience and his children, who are clearly taking after their father. On his behalf, I also thank Thomas and Steve, the employers who helped him and his wife and did all they could to support them as members of staff.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) said that the Bill is the right thing to do and talked about bonding time; we must agree that that is a vital relationship for parents at that time. She also said that good employers are already doing the right thing and helping with newborn children. This Bill is a floor, not a ceiling. I want to ensure that everybody gets a good level of care, and other businesses may be able to put something on top of that, as she said.
I will refer to the point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) later. Madam Deputy Speaker, who is no longer in her place, talked about what happened to her and the stressful time that she had in more ways than one. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) pointed out that the child is often not the only child in the family, which must be considered. There were also many helpful and supportive interventions from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate raised concerns about the length of time that it would take for the Bill to be implemented. There is clearly cross-party support for the Bill and we hope that it will complete its parliamentary passage and receive Royal Assent as swiftly as possible. Setting up a new leave and pay entitlement takes time. It requires secondary legislation and changes to Government systems that administer statutory payments, and businesses need good notice in order to prepare. HMRC and commercial payroll providers require at least 18 months’ lead time to implement such changes following Royal Assent. I spoke with my officials this week, however, and we are looking at what we can do to speed that up. I note that the hon. Member for Glasgow East, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), the hon. Member for Newport West all requested that.
David Linden
I am grateful to the Minister for her discussions with officials in her Department, but will she undertake to have a conversation with the Leader of the House and business managers to see whether it might be possible to expedite the Bill as we try to get it through the House?
Jane Hunt
That is a good idea, and I will take that up.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate also raised concerns about why seven full days of neonatal are required before the entitlement is triggered. In response, I flag that the policy is primarily intended to support parents of babies facing longer stays in hospital and that the needs of parents in that position must be balanced against those of their employer. When developing the approach, the responses from parents, parent representative groups and business representatives to the 2019 consultation on neonatal leave and pay were considered.
Luke Hall
I thank the Minister for the tone of her response so far, especially her points about being prepared to look at speeding up the implementation of the Bill following Royal Assent.
I have a small, technical point. I completely accept the seven-day trigger, which is largely in line with what everyone was expecting, but I was not expecting that the first day appears to be the day after birth, so it is actually eight days. We do not need to deal with that today—we could look at it in Committee—but will the Minister commit to taking that away and talking to officials in BEIS? That conversation can continue throughout the Bill’s passage.
Jane Hunt
I absolutely will take that away.
The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock referred to other family leave and pay entitlements. Parents have access to a range of pay and leave entitlements in their child’s first year, giving working families more choice and flexibility about who cares for their child and when. Our maternity leave entitlement is generous. To qualifying employed women, we offer 52 weeks of maternity leave, of which 39 are paid. That is more than three times the EU minimum requirement. For self-employed women, and those who are not eligible for statutory maternity pay, maternity allowance may be available. Both maternity payments are designed to provide a measure of financial security to help women to stop working towards the end of their pregnancy and in the months after childbirth in the interests of their and their baby’s health and wellbeing.
We also recognise that fathers and partners play a crucial role in the first year of their child’s life, both through supporting the mother and by developing a relationship with the child. Paternity leave arrangements enable employed fathers and partners who meet the qualifying conditions to take up to two weeks of paid leave within the first eight weeks following the birth of their child or placement for adoption. We recognise, however, that paternity leave can be improved, so we made a manifesto commitment to make it easier for fathers and partners to take it. We will announce how we will be doing that in due course.
Shared parental leave and pay provides parents with flexibility over their child’s care in the first year. It challenges the assumption that the mother will always be the primary carer and enables working parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in the first year of their child’s life. That enables mothers who want to return to work early to do so and enables fathers and partners to be their child’s primary carer if the parents wish. To help make shared parental leave more accessible, we launched an online tool last year that allows parents to check their eligibility and plan their leave. We are evaluating the shared parental leave scheme and will publish further findings in due course.
The hon. Member for Bristol East queried the length of time it has taken to legislate and deliver this entitlement. In 2019, the Conservative party manifesto committed to introducing neonatal leave care and pay. We consulted on the details and published a response in 2020. During covid, the Government rightly prioritised our response to the pandemic. We are pleased that the neonatal care leave and pay entitlement is now being taken forward in legislation and fully support this Bill.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I did not intend to speak today, as this is a particularly fresh issue for me and it has been a challenging few weeks. I thank my SNP colleagues for the support that they have given to me and my family in that regard. Before the Minister concludes, will she place on record her thanks and support for all the staff who work tirelessly in neonatal units across these isles, and the miraculous work they do to keep young people alive and give them the futures that they deserve?
Jane Hunt
Absolutely, and I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for that intervention. That is absolutely spot-on and correct, and I fully support everything he said.
In conclusion, these measures would provide invaluable support and protection for parents during some of the most stressful days of their lives when their children are in neonatal care. That entitlement is also backed by Government evidence and analysis, showing a clear need for further support for those parents. Therefore, the Government are pleased to support the Bill. Supporting the Bill is in line with our ongoing commitment to support workers and build a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. It is good to see support from across the political spectrum for this important measure, as is clear from the debate. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East to support the passage of the Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald
May I say how grateful, and indeed humbled, I am with the way Members have spoken so passionately, coming together unanimously to support the Bill? I was optimistic about support for the Bill, but it has taken my breath away. Indeed, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell) has suggested a visit to my constituency, and the talented former Minister, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) requested to serve on the Bill Committee. The answer, of course, is yes, particularly if he can bring a friend. There was even a welcome and powerful intervention from you, Madam Deputy Speaker, which we all appreciated.
Many Members raised similar points, which is testimony to the work of charities such as Bliss and others, how they have advocated for this case, and how we have all become familiar with the arguments in favour of the Bill. Many other sensible points have been added, which it was remiss of me to miss out in my opening speech. One of those was about the benefit to employers. Employers are overwhelmingly in support of these measures. They appreciate that having folk at work who have kids in neonatal care is of no use to them, and they end up managing it through sick pay and other means, rather than through proper statutory leave.
Finally, it is so important to welcome and highlight the fantastic work of staff in neonatal units up and down the country, and I look forward to visiting the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) to see that at first hand. As I said at the outset of the debate, the best advocates for this cause are those who speak from personal experience. I am particularly grateful to MPs who have spoken from that point of view today, and I look forward to working with them all in the weeks ahead to as the Bill continues its passage through the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Wednesday 7th September 2022
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary reminders for the Committee. I am conscious of how warm and muggy it is, so if Members and staff would like to remove their jackets, they are very welcome to do so. Please switch all electronic devices off or to silent. That includes those who are watching in the Gallery. No food and drink, except for the water provided, is permitted during sittings of the Committee. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. My selection and grouping of amendments for today’s sitting is available online and in the room. I have selected four amendments in the name of the Member in charge of the Bill, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. The amendments will be considered alongside the existing content of the Bill in a single debate.
Clause 1
Neonatal care leave and pay
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 1, in clause 2, page 1, line 9, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment would exclude provision amending or repealing an Act of Parliament from the scope of the power in clause 2 to make consequential provision.
Amendment 2, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, leave out subsection (4).
This amendment is in consequence of Amendment 1.
Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 1, line 17, leave out “Any other” and insert “A”.
This amendment is in consequence of Amendment 1.
Clauses 2 and 3 stand part.
Amendment 4, in the schedule, page 6, line 40, leave out subsection (6) and insert—
“(6) In this section the ‘relevant week’—
(a) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory maternity pay under section 164 in respect of the child, is the week immediately preceding the 14th week before the expected week of confinement (within the meaning of Part 12);
(b) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory paternity pay under section 171ZA (birth) in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZA(2) in that case;
(c) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory paternity pay under section 171ZB (adoption) in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZB(2) in that case;
(d) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory adoption pay under section 171ZL in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZL(2) in that case;
(e) in any other case, is the week immediately before the one in which the neonatal care starts.”
This amendment provides for the “relevant week” in section 171ZZ16 (for the purpose of determining whether particular conditions relating to eligibility for statutory neonatal care pay are satisfied) to, in cases where an employee is entitled to another type of statutory family pay, align with the week that is relevant to that entitlement.
That the schedule be the schedule to the Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Thank you very much, Ms Bardell. It is great to see you in the Chair, and this is the first time that I have had the pleasure of serving under your chairmanship. May I also say that it is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place? I cannot always say that about Ministers in this particular Government, but I genuinely mean that. I am very grateful to her and her predecessor and to their officials for all their co-operation and support as the Bill has progressed.
I also thank all hon. Members for giving their time this morning to take forward debate on the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill. I appreciate that this is a busy morning, with lots happening. I think that we have already lost one Committee member to promotion, so I will not take it too personally if one or two members are keeping a close eye on their phones just in case a call comes. I again express particular thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, not just because they have been committed campaigners for neonatal care leave and pay for a considerable time, but also for their significant assistance in getting the Committee spaces filled up very quickly indeed in what was a stressful 12-hour period at the end of last term.
As hon. Members know, the Bill will put on the statute book an entitlement to paid leave for employed parents of babies who require neonatal care. As Members from both sides of the House agreed on Second Reading, that has the potential to make a big difference to the experience of parents at an incredibly stressful time and to deliver positive outcomes for their children. The leave and pay will apply to eligible parents of babies who are admitted to hospital within their first 28 days of life and who have a continuous stay in hospital or other agreed care setting of seven full days or more. The intention is that such parents will be able to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave on top of their other parental entitlements, such as maternity or paternity leave and pay. There will be one week of neonatal care leave for every week that the child spends in neonatal care. That leave will be protected, and a person should not suffer any form of detriment due to taking that leave.
Up to 12 weeks of statutory neonatal care pay will be available to employees who meet a continuity of service and a minimum earnings test. Neonatal care leave will be a day one right, available to an employee from their first day in a new job. Statutory neonatal care pay, like other family-related pay rights, would be available, as I said, to those employees who meet a continuity of service and a minimum earnings test.
The Bill sets out in considerable detail the legal framework for the entitlement. Large parts of that are very similar to other leave and pay entitlements that are already in operation, to avoid adding complexity. The Bill requires regulations to provide that eligible parents can take neonatal care leave and pay within at least a 68-week window following a child’s birth. That is designed to ensure that mothers and fathers have sufficient time to take their neonatal care leave on top of or after other leave rights to which they may be entitled.
I now turn to the amendments. As an Opposition MP, I have spent a lot of time bemoaning the use of Henry VIII clauses and arguing that they should be taken out of Bills, so it is quite nice today to be able to practise what I have preached, I hope. Amendments 1, 2 and 3 modify clause 2 of the Bill to remove the power to amend primary legislation via secondary legislation—a so-called Henry VIII power. The amendments remove subsections (2) and (4) from that clause and subsequently modify the text in subsection (5). Taken together, the amendments have the effect of changing the Henry VIII power to a power to amend secondary legislation only, which is of course common in primary legislation.
The Henry VIII power was originally included to ensure that the Bill, if it was successful in gaining Royal Assent, worked effectively alongside other legislation going through Parliament at the same time, in particular the Carer’s Leave Bill, which is being taken through by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). On further assessment and examination, it is not thought that the power is required any more. On that basis, I invite the Committee to accept the amendments.
Stuart C. McDonald
I will simply commend part 3 to the Committee. I thank Members for their indulgence.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
I am pleased that we are back here so soon after Second Reading. It is just a couple of days after recess, which shows how important it is to get a good position on the private Members’ Bill ballot. Again, I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for supporting the Bill and bringing it forward in the way he has. Today he has given a very comprehensive overview of the clauses and the amendments proposed.
I want to make a couple of very quick points. First, amendment 4 is very positive and makes complete sense. I thank the Minister for bringing it forward and supporting it. It will change the details around the qualifying criteria for neonatal care pay. I know there was concern raised by a couple of groups over the summer that certain parents, including women who were on statutory sick pay in particular, would be disadvantaged by the implementation of the Bill as it was drafted. The amendment makes a sensible change and brings the qualifying rules in line with maternity, paternity and adoption pay. It will hopefully receive unqualified support.
I also want to thank the Minister for the work she did over the summer looking into the point I raised on Second Reading about the seven-day trigger. I know it is a small point, but I was grateful that she took it away, looked at it and made sure the drafting was right. I am pleased to hear that it is, and I understand the reasons why it would not have been productive to have changed that in Committee today.
Lastly, I am slightly concerned about some of the noises that are coming out of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the implementation of the Bill. I think that 18 months after Royal Assent is too long and would essentially mean we were looking at implementation in 2025. Really, when all we are talking about is the upgrading of HM Revenue and Customs systems, which we have been talking about for a year or so now, it does not seem like there is any real reason why this has to go on. I know the Minister was very sympathetic when a number of us raised this point on Second Reading, so I am sure she has been pressing the Department over the summer.
There are clear advantages to delivering the money that was set aside from 2023 as quickly as we can. It makes sense to deliver it before a general election for all sorts of reasons, but mainly we want to deliver it quickly to make sure parents are not left in an impossible situation like that which so many have found and continue to find themselves in. I know we all want to see that come to an end as quickly as possible. Will the Minister update us today or in writing on her views about when implementation is likely? I am delighted the Bill is progressing so quickly and has had such unqualified support so far. I thank all members of the Committee for their attendance and for supporting the Bill.
David Linden
As ever, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. Your position as Chair makes you unable to comment on the Bill, although I am sure that you would be keen to put your support for it on the record if you could—so I will do that for you. I pay particular tribute to your work with your constituent Coady Dorman and her son Matthew, who was born prematurely. Coady will be incredibly appreciative of the fact that you are chairing the proceedings on the Bill as we expedite it through the House.
Like the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, I thank everybody for the cross-party way in which we are piloting the Bill through the House. As I walked into work this morning, I reflected that I had perhaps been a little unfair to the Minister yesterday during a debate on the devolution of employment rights. Actually, this place probably works at its best when folk work on a cross-party basis; a good example would be the work done by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland on her One Punch assaults campaign. Part of the reason why I was so keen for the Committee to progress quickly was that I suspect some Government Members will not be in their positions by the end of the week as they move, perhaps, into junior ministerial office. It is important that we work on a cross-party basis when we agree on issues. All that is a veiled way of saying sorry to the Minister for giving her such a hard time yesterday.
Like the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, I want to put on the record my support for amendments 1 to 4, the last of which is quite substantial. I share some of his concerns about implementation. One thing that reassured me during my past conversations with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), the former Minister, was learning that BEIS officials had done quite a lot of work on this. Given that we had been led to believe—completely fairly, perhaps—that Government officials had done the groundwork, it strikes me that the 18-month delay for implementation is a little out of kilter. If something needs to be ironed out between BEIS and HMRC, I am sure the Minister will see to that.
Those are the main points that I wanted to put on the record. I do not see a need for the Committee to spend huge amounts of time on the Bill, which is not controversial and already has a budget line of £15 million from a previous Budget. On that basis, I look forward to its passing through this Committee, having its remaining stages on the Floor of the House and then going over to the other place.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jane Hunt)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. Introducing neonatal care and leave through the Bill will mean that parents will not have to worry about work when they face the stress and anxiety of caring for a sick baby. It will at least relieve them of one concern at such a very difficult time.
On Second Reading, we heard from Members on both sides, some of whom are serving on the Committee today, about their personal experiences of having children in neonatal care. Again, I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate, among others, for sharing their personal experiences; that was very much appreciated and I am sure it made a difference on Second Reading. Both Members talked movingly about their personal experiences and explained how incredibly worried they felt when their children were in neonatal care. The Government are keen to offer families in such difficult circumstances our full support, and I am pleased to be here today to reiterate that the Government fully support the Bill.
I would like to touch on the two amendments proposed by the Bill’s promoter. The first would amend clause 2 to remove a power to amend primary legislation by secondary legislation, a so-called Henry VIII power, and replace it with a power to amend secondary legislation only. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East—I have now managed to say his constituency name correctly—points out, the need for that Henry VIII power has passed. Issues with how the entitlement might interact with other legislation that might be forthcoming have been resolved. That being the case, I am in favour of the clause being amended to limit the effect of the power and agree that the amended clause should stand part of the Bill.
The second amendment proposed by the sponsor is to make changes to the relevant week used to calculate pay. Again, I support that change. I agree with the sponsor’s detailed explanation on the need for the amendment, which will ensure that parents who are already low earners do not miss out on the entitlement to statutory neonatal care pay. I therefore support the amended schedule, which should stand part of the Bill. I also agree that clauses 1 to 3 and schedule parts 1 to 3 should stand part of the Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald
I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, and I thank the Minister again for her support for the Bill and for the amendments.
The three points highlighted by the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate are exactly where our focus has been in discussions over the summer: amendment 4 in relation to the relevant week, the seven days—I am absolutely on the same page as him on that—and implementation. In fact, as I detect an absolute determination to get things done quickly, I think our focus should probably now be on HMRC rather than BEIS, so perhaps we can organise a cross-party delegation to HMRC at some point to make sure we are focusing on the right people.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East, the first thing that I want to do is go and read the Hansard of yesterday’s debate on the devolution of employment law. He is right: there are times when we have fundamental disagreements, and we should have passionate debates and arguments, but there are good times when we are all on the same page, and it is nice to be able to work in that way as well.
I thank all Committee members for attending and for their contributions; I thank you, Ms Bardell, for your expert chairing; and I thank all supporters of the Bill, including those at Bliss, some of whom are here today—[Hon. Members: “ Hear, hear!]
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Amendments made: 1, in clause 2, page 1, line 9, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment would exclude provision amending or repealing an Act of Parliament from the scope of the power in clause 2 to make consequential provision.
Amendment 2, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, leave out subsection (4).
This amendment is in consequence of Amendment 1.
Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 1, line 17, leave out “Any other” and insert “A”.—(Stuart C. McDonald.)
This amendment is in consequence of Amendment 1.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Amendment made: 4, in the schedule, page 6, line 40, leave out subsection (6) and insert—
“(6) In this section the ‘relevant week’—
(a) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory maternity pay under section 164 in respect of the child, is the week immediately preceding the 14th week before the expected week of confinement (within the meaning of Part 12);
(b) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory paternity pay under section 171ZA (birth) in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZA(2) in that case;
(c) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory paternity pay under section 171ZB (adoption) in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZB(2) in that case;
(d) in any case where the person is entitled to statutory adoption pay under section 171ZL in respect of the child, is the same week as the relevant week for the purposes of section 171ZL(2) in that case;
(e) in any other case, is the week immediately before the one in which the neonatal care starts.”—(Stuart C. McDonald.)
This amendment provides for the “relevant week” in section 171ZZ16 (for the purpose of determining whether particular conditions relating to eligibility for statutory neonatal care pay are satisfied) to, in cases where an employee is entitled to another type of statutory family pay, align with the week that is relevant to that entitlement.
Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
The Chair
Before I end the sitting, I thank all Committee members, the Government and all who have been involved in making sure that this historic Bill makes it through the House so quickly.
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Friday 20th January 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Third time.
I am incredibly happy to be able to bring the Bill back for further debate. At the heart of the debate and at the heart of the Bill is a simple idea: babies in neonatal care need their parents and their parents need to be with their babies, and we must do all we can to give families that vital time together. Today, we have the opportunity to help give them that time without the added worries of missing work and losing pay.
If I may, Mr Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank colleagues across the House who have supported the Bill’s journey so far. I am very pleased to start with Madam Deputy Speaker, the Chairman of Ways and Means, given her kind words and insight on Second Reading. She noted the unanimity of the House that day, when we heard from Members right across the Chamber, including many with very personal and powerful stories and experiences. That consensus continued in Committee, whose membership included three of the four Ministers who have, at various points, been responsible for the Bill and very supportive of it, including the Minister on the Government Front Bench today. I am very pleased to see him in his place.
I would like to give particular thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), who have both been especially helpful and have campaigned tirelessly on this issue for several years, but I am grateful to colleagues in all different parties for their support, both during proceedings in the House and in discussions outside.
I hope that spirit of consensus will continue today and I am optimistic that it will, this being one of the very rare proposals that could be found in both the SNP and Conservative manifestos at the 2019 general election. If that spirit of consensus does continue, I will have a whole host of organisations and individuals to thank for helping to champion this cause and build that consensus. Over the next few minutes I want to briefly recall the problem the Bill seeks to address and then detail how its provisions will address that problem. Finally, I will explain the positive changes that were made in Committee to improve the Bill. First of all is the issue that needs to be addressed.
The arrival of a new baby is of course overwhelmingly a time of joy and hope, but an estimated 100,000 babies every year are admitted to neonatal care in the United Kingdom following their birth. Many of those babies will spend prolonged periods of time on a neonatal care unit in a hospital as a result of being born prematurely or with other health conditions. For their parents, this becomes an incredibly worrying and stressful time. They will be desperate to focus on getting through that challenging time, supporting each other and being with their baby—or, indeed, babies—but very many find that difficult or feel unsupported. Fathers, if eligible, get only two weeks of statutory paternity leave. When that runs out, they may be called back to work while the baby is still in hospital. How can you productively work when your baby is on a ventilator in an intensive care unit?
When babies have an extended stay in hospital at the start of their lives, mothers report that 39 weeks of paid maternity leave sometimes feels barely like maternity leave at all. A large proportion of the time can be used up busing alone to and from a distant hospital where their baby is in neonatal care, and sometimes juggling other responsibilities, perhaps another child, all of which leads them to feel that they do not have sufficient quality time at home with their baby before having to return to work. Some will feel compelled to leave work as a result, and many do. None of that is good for parents, or for the developmental outcomes of premature babies denied important early and regular contact with their parents.
How will the Bill assist? The successful passage of the Bill will create a new statutory leave and pay entitlement for the parents of babies receiving neonatal care. Employed parents who find themselves in that stressful situation in future will know that, as a minimum, they are entitled to paid time off work to care for their babies and they will not suffer detriment from their employer as a result.
That protected time off work is crucial. There are some brilliant, supportive and flexible employers out there who deserve to be commended, and it would be great to see some more follow their lead. But sadly, they remain the exception rather than the rule. That is why we need neonatal care leave and pay entitlement to protect and support many more parents.
I turn to the main provisions of the Bill. If it is passed, neonatal care leave and pay will be available to parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care up to the age of 28 days, and who have a continuous stay in hospital or in another agreed care setting of seven full days or more. Neonatal care leave will be a day-one right, meaning that it will be available to an employee from their first day in a new job. Statutory neonatal care pay, like other family-related pay rights, will be available to those employees who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests. The intention is that parents will be entitled to up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave—one for every week that their child spends in neonatal case. That leave will be protected. A person should not suffer any form of detriment due to taking up their leave.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I am delighted to be here to support my hon. Friend and to see that this Bill has cross-party support. Does he agree that the provisions in the Bill go a long way to ensure gender equality for fathers and non-birthing parents, who are often excluded from statutory maternity provisions?
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support and her intervention, which I fully agree with.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is commonplace to congratulate Members for the passage of their Bill, but the hon. Gentleman will have sincere support from all sides, and I support his Bill. I hope he will allow me to probe a little, as I was not on the Bill Committee. He is talking about the benefits to employees and to families. Obviously, there is a burden on companies that will have to pay for those benefits. Could he advise the House of whether there was a discussion in Committee about those burdens? What is his understanding of what the additional burdens on companies may be?
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support. He asks a perfectly fair question that I will come to in a little more detail later on. In essence, the provisions for businesses will be the same as for other existing rights. There will be reimbursement of 103% for small businesses, and up to 93% percent for larger businesses. For those businesses who already follow good practice, there will be a benefit because they will be reimbursed for what they are already doing. At the same time, feedback from employers shows that they benefit because they have a better relationship with employees, and the return to work is much smoother and more successful. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question.
I will continue to describe the main provisions of the Bill. For parents who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests, the expectation is that neonatal pay will be paid during the leave at the statutory rate, which is just shy of £160, or 90% of the employee’s average wages—whichever is lower. Hopefully, that will be uprated in line with increases to statutory payments—something that we will monitor closely. That mirrors existing family leave and pay provisions such as paternity, shared parental and adoption and maternity after the first six weeks. The process for reimbursing employers will also mirror existing schemes.
There will be flexibility about when the leave is taken. The likelihood is that many fathers who have only two weeks of paternity leave will want to take their neonatal leave immediately thereafter, while their child is still in neonatal care. The situation for mothers is a little different, because once maternity leave commences, a mother cannot stop that maternity leave to take neonatal care leave, otherwise she will lose her remaining maternity leave. Neonatal care leave is therefore to be flexible in order that mothers can add it to the end of their maternity leave and any other forms of parental leave they might be entitled to. With that in mind, the Bill provides for the window of time within which neonatal care leave can be taken to be set out in regulations. However, the window will be six to eight weeks following the child’s birth, which ensures that mothers and fathers have sufficient time to take their neonatal care leave alongside other leave rights that they might be entitled to, rather than losing out on any other such entitlements.
Finally, I want to explain the amendments that were made in Committee. First, clause 2 was amended to remove the power to amend primary legislation via secondary legislation—a so-called Henry VIII power. That was originally included to ensure that the Bill, on becoming law, worked effectively alongside other legislation that is going through Parliament. Upon further assessment and examination, it seems that this power is not required, and the clause now only empowers amendments to secondary legislation. Given that I spend an awful lot of my time as an Opposition MP shouting about excessive and inappropriate use of Henry VIII powers, it is pleasing to have been able to take at least one of them out of this Bill.
Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, part 2 of the schedule to the Bill was amended by changing the definition of “relevant week” in proposed new section 171ZZ16 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. The definition of “relevant week” is important because it fixes a point at which it is assessed whether a person is entitled to neonatal care pay. The Bill, on introduction, defined the relevant week as the one immediately prior to the week in which neonatal care started, which is similar to the drafting of equivalent provisions for parental bereavement pay. However, if a parent was already receiving statutory pay—for example, maternity pay—in the relevant week before their child enters neonatal care, their income could end up being lower than usual, negatively impacting their ability to qualify for neonatal care pay.
For those employees who are eligible for other parental pay entitlements such as maternity, paternity or adoption pay, the amendment made in Committee changes the definition of “relevant week” for neonatal care pay, to align it with the definition of “relevant week” in these existing entitlements. Amending the Bill in this way ensures that parents who are already low earners and perhaps only just above the earnings threshold do not miss out on the entitlement to statutory neonatal care pay simply because they are already receiving another type of family-related pay when their minimum earnings for neonatal care pay are assessed. Where an employee would not qualify for any of the other statutory parental pay, the relevant week will continue to be defined as the week immediately before the week in which neonatal care starts.
Richard Fuller
I was not in Committee, so I want to ask a particular question, and I am going to sound very smart. In subsection (2)(a) of proposed new section 171ZZ16, “Entitlement”, of part 12ZE of the 1992 Act, there is reference to
“a child who is receiving, or has received, neonatal care”.
The hon. Gentleman has been very clear on the Henry VIII powers and how the entitlement to this pay is aligned with other funding that is provided, but what is the definition of “neonatal care” in practice? It will be defined in regulations, but in practice, is it limited to parents of children who have been in neonatal intensive care units and other hospital facilities, or is there a broader definition?
Stuart C. McDonald
The definition in the Bill encompasses neonatal care up to the 28th day of the new baby’s life. Further thought has to be given to whether we limit that to care on a neonatal ward or whether we go further than that, and I hope that we do, because there will, for example, be families who have babies at home but are regularly required to be at hospital appointments or have regular interventions and people visiting to provide care and treatment. We have to think about how we define it in a way that makes it clear but does not exclude people simply because they are not physically in a hospital 24 hours a day. That is a fair point, and further work needs to be done before we come to a final conclusion on exactly how this should look.
In concluding, I want to reiterate that what we are debating here is the traumatic and stressful experiences faced by families with wee ones in neonatal care, and at the heart of this proposed legislation are vulnerable babies who need us to do more to help their parents at a crucial time. We need to ensure as far as we can that those parents have the time and resources to focus on their babies, without the additional burden of worries about money and time off work. There are tens of thousands of families each year counting on us to get this done and get it right, and I ask Members across the House to give this Bill their support.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, not only for calling me to speak but for making accommodations to enable me to speak in this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). I congratulate him on getting his important Bill to Third Reading; it was a pleasure to support it on Second Reading and in Committee. On Second Reading, he said:
“We should all be enthusiastic about this brilliant Bill, which I know will make such a huge difference to tens of thousands of families each and every year.”—[Official Report, 15 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 593.]
I hope that the cross-party support for the Bill today will reflect that enthusiasm.
It is estimated that approximately 50,000 babies born in the UK each year need to spend more than one week in neonatal care. This policy change will provide relief and support for the families of those 50,000 babies, meaning that parents can concern themselves with and focus on the wellbeing and care of their children, and not fret about their employment or income. At such a stressful time in parents’ lives, it is right that we should ensure that an extra financial burden is not added to the situation.
I know that the hon. Member worked closely with the charity Bliss, which has supported families across the UK, including in Cheadle and Greater Manchester. May I take the opportunity on behalf of my constituents to thank Bliss and other groups that support people in that position?
For parents whose children may spend some weeks in hospital, the Bill will mean that they do not have to miss out on valuable time with their baby at home. Importantly, the fact that paid leave can be taken within a window of 68 weeks following the child’s birth, as I understand it, will hand parents the power to make their entitlement as useful as possible to them.
The Bill, which will amend the Employment Rights Act 1996, will create a natural extension to the UK’s already generous parental leave and pay by providing an entitlement for parents of babies who need care in health settings for more than one week before they reach the age of 28 days. The 12 weeks of paid leave will be on top of other statutory leave and pay entitlements. Critically, as the hon. Member set out, it will be a day one right: an employee will be entitled to it from their first day on the job. We know that many employers already handle these situations sensitively and with compassion, but it is right that this care and understanding be extended across all employers. Quite simply, the Bill is about caring for and valuing people.
I am glad that the Government have supported amendments that the hon. Member, as the Bill’s promoter, tabled in Committee. They include an amendment that makes changes to the relevant week to calculate pay and seeks to ensure that parents who are low earners do not miss out on their entitlement to statutory neonatal care and support. It is important that such a policy change is delivered in the most effective and accessible way.
At previous stages, Members across the House shared their own deeply personal experiences, as well as stories of their friends and constituents. We all know someone who would have benefited from this leave entitlement, so it is good to know that in future there will not be the same added burden at a time of worry and distress. I know that the policy has been in the works for many years and the Government are committed to delivering it. Once again, I thank the hon. Member for bringing it forward. I hope that it will have unanimous support across the House.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson). May I, too, echo the congratulations to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on all his hard work on this Bill? It is a genuine honour to speak in the remaining stages on this private Member’s Bill. We all know how rare it is for there to be a time when such a Bill can progress in this place, but the particular importance of this Bill makes this an even greater achievement. I, too, would like to place on record my sincere thanks to Bliss, the charity that does so much work to help parents with babies in a neonatal unit, for all of its hard work to help sick and premature babies every day of the year. I wish to declare my interest, as a proud vice-chair of the all-party group on premature and sick babies, which has been campaigning on this issue for a very long time. I, too, place on my record my sincere thanks to its chair, my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), for all his hard work.
Colleagues may recall that in response to last year’s Gracious Speech I stood in this Chamber and condemned the then Minister for claiming to “remain very much committed” to introducing neonatal leave and pay via an employment Bill only for any trace of the Bill to be surreptitiously removed when the moment came. That was just one of 20 times the Government promised us an employment Bill. I have vocally supported the need to legislate to create statutory neonatal leave and pay since I was elected to this place, so of course I am over the moon that the Bill from the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East will soon be sent to the other place and will be one step closer to finally becoming law. This Bill is personal for me: my son Sullivan was born two weeks prematurely, by emergency C-section. Sulley stopped breathing shortly after birth and spent two weeks fighting for his life in a neonatal intensive care unit. I will never forget the anxiety my husband and I experienced in those very long few weeks. In previous debates, I have shared with colleagues how, following Sulley’s birth, I was completely dependent on my husband while recovering. We were fortunate that my husband’s employer had a flexible approach to annual leave and he was able to take paid time off to support us. However, the thousands of new parents with babies who require neonatal care every single day of every year are often not so lucky.
As colleagues will know, a shocking one in seven newborn babies receive some sort of neonatal care. Paid neonatal leave, as this Bill would provide, ensures that parents can focus fully on being there with their new baby, without having the complicating pressures of worrying about work or finances. Those precious first days with a new baby are sacred, and for any baby in need of neonatal care this should be no different. The inflexibility of our current parental leave legislation serves only to worsen what is for many parents of babies in intensive neonatal care by far the most traumatic period of their lives—it does not have to be this way. So although it is welcome that we will likely finally see neonatal leave and pay enshrined in employment law, I must place on record my frustration that it has taken so long for us to have reached this point; I am afraid to say that there has been an absence of leadership on this issue from the Government. I am sure I do not need to remind the Minister that his Government made a manifesto commitment in 2019 to introduce neonatal leave and pay, and that this important modernisation of employment law for new mothers and fathers alike has had to be introduced by a colleague. It has not been introduced by those on the Government Front Bench, which suggests that this Government have been asleep at the wheel.
None the less, I am, of course, relieved that the Government have supported this Bill. I was not part of this Bill's Committee, but I am pleased that the Government appeared to work constructively with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East to get this Bill to where it is today. But I cannot help but think of all the parents of babies in need of urgent neonatal care who will not benefit from this Bill, because for them it is already too late. This Bill will be a welcome addition to the statute book, but it is long overdue. I wish it every success in the other place, and, once again, I congratulate and commend the hon. Gentleman for his dedication to this vital work.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
May I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for the emotional and personal tales she just told? It is so important to share those, and telling them in this Chamber must take a lot of courage, so I welcome her doing that, because I am sure that many people at home who are watching this will have gone through similar experiences. May I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald)—I hope I said that correctly this time—for introducing this Bill? Private Members’ Bills do not always get through to this stage and it is easy for them to fall much earlier.
I know from hearing testimonies in the previous debates and in the Committee, and from speaking to members of the public, including constituents of mine, people’s personal take on this Bill, which brings to life how having children is one of the most—if not the most—precious thing that those of us who are fortunate to have had children can do. My family were fortunate in not needing to go through neonatal care, but I do remember that, when my daughter was born at Watford General Hospital, emotions ran high; there was a fear for this precious, fragile, wonderful person that we had brought into our lives. There is this fear that something could go wrong, so to have to go through the distress of something actually going wrong must be so challenging and difficult to deal with. That is why the Bill is so important.
According to the Office for National Statistics, as I understand it, there are 624,828 births in England and Wales every year, and 13,500 in Hertfordshire, but every year more than 90,000 babies are cared for in neonatal units in the UK due to premature birth, or sickness among full-term births. That is a huge number. It affects not just those children, but their parents, their families and all those who need wrap-around care. It is difficult to think that a parent could not spend time with their child in those precious few days, in that first couple of weeks, but it is not just for their child; it is for their loved ones—their spouse—as well. People want to make sure that they can put first not work but the thing that they probably go to work for.
I appreciate that colleagues will quite rightly challenge and scrutinise the impact on business and organisations. There are burdens—if we can call them that—that are placed on business, but, actually, the burden of having a member of staff or member of a team who is desperately worried about their newborn child while being at work cannot be very productive and it cannot be helpful for them doing their job. I would say that it is not a burden to enable the Bill to pass and to follow these rules; it is something that will help businesses. It will help to build morale, build a team, and make sure that people are being productive. That is why the Bill is so important. We hope that businesses and society will do the right thing, and often that is the case—the tips Bill that we will discuss later this morning is a good example of that—but they do not always do the right thing. This law will make sure that support is there for the families as well as for the babies. It will also ensure that businesses know that, as family life is at the heart of this country, workers have a right to take time off to look after their family member and their child.
When researching the subject of this debate, I looked up some statistics and found that the number of families and parents impacted is quite high. Two in five parents of hospitalised babies—40%—have anxiety or post-traumatic stress. Levels decline over time, but, a year after birth, one in four is still suffering. That is higher than generally seen in new parents. The truth is that this goes to the heart of mental health as well. Next week—to give a small plug—I shall be introducing a ten-minute rule Bill on mental health first aid in the workplace, and all Members are welcome to join in on that.
People are far more aware today than they have ever been of the importance of mental health and mental wellbeing in the workplace. Two in five parents of hospitalised babies suffer anxiety or post-traumatic stress, which is a huge number. The fact is that that can trigger depression and long-term impacts, so those first couple of weeks—or even first few days—of being able to be there for our loved ones and for our child will reduce the risk of long-term impacts, such as anxiety and depression. That can also have an impact on people’s relationships. Those to whom I have spoken, who have been supportive of the Bill, all say that we are not talking about an isolated two or three weeks and then it is over and suddenly life gets back to normal. It does not. When people have a young child, the worries and anxieties about what that will bring in future are incredibly strong and can linger for years. They can damage relationships and they can harm other children in the family.
One other point to make is that, as I understand it, the average length of stay in neonatal care in England and Wales is seven days, so this Bill will do a huge amount to ensure that in that first week or two, parents can be supported and do not have to worry that they will damage their career opportunities. They will not have to worry about having to go cap in hand to their bosses to ask for what is really a family right in this country.
I will not speak for too long, but I want to say a huge thank you to hon. Members across the House for supporting this Bill. It is an important way to show that this country is one that cares about family and about children, and that builds a better society and a better community. Thank you for indulging me by allowing me to speak today, Mr Speaker; I wholeheartedly support the Bill.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend—indeed, my very good friend and constituency neighbour—the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on bringing this Bill forward, having won the parliamentary lottery. That is something about this place that ought to be reformed, but I pick my battles, for now.
To be honest, this has been a really difficult week to be an elected Member of this place, but the Bill my hon. Friend has presented has been a light at the end of the tunnel and sets a refreshing change of tone, especially as it has support across the House. It provides a glaring example, however, of the priorities on different sides of the House: the Government set the topic far more often than we do but have opted to spend their time on eroding workers’ rights, whereas the SNP have brought forward a Bill that gives workers more rights.
The Bill seeks to address the inadequacy of existing parental leave and pay when a baby is born premature and sick. It will support and assist families across the UK to make ends meet during an incredibly challenging time and present parents with an opportunity to have more time at home to care for their baby when they eventually make it home to their family. The Bill is of particular importance during this cost of living crisis, where working families are crying out for additional support, particularly where a home may need to be heated all day long to provide an adequate temperature for a premature and sick baby.
Ms Qaisar
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that this Bill is vital because, at its heart, it goes a long way to relieving the additional financial cost for parents at what is already an expensive time, and removes the worry for parents about the need to pay for the costs incurred when a baby is born prematurely?
Amy Callaghan
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. The Bill will introduce two new rights: neonatal care leave and statutory neonatal care pay. Neonatal leave will be a day 1 right, available to all employees.
In preparation for this debate, I spoke with a friend and former colleague, Kirsty Pringle, who is now an NHS registered nurse and also the mum of a premature baby, her daughter Eilish. Kirsty emphasised in her remarks to me just how important both the rights under this Bill will be to families. She explained that too much time was spent worrying that, if her baby daughter survived and she eventually got to take her home, she would not have much maternity leave left to spend with her. Fortunately, Eilish is thriving—but those worries, which were only too real at the time, still play on Kirsty’s mind.
Taking sick leave from work to care for a premature baby should never have become the norm. I am sure many families and organisations will be delighted at the change being implemented with this Bill today. I place on record my thanks to the brilliant organisation Bliss. It would also be remiss of me not to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who has campaigned on this issue for longer than I have been elected to this place, and is watching this debate from his constituency home today between constituency engagements.
We should all be proud and enthusiastic about this Bill, which will make a huge difference to families with premature and sick babies where there previously has been a significant gap in support. I close by again thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for bringing the Bill forward.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure to speak to this important Bill, which will make a difference to thousands of babies and families each and every year. I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) and congratulate him on his determination in bringing the Bill forward.
As the former chair of the Save the Baby charity, and the mother of three amazing children, this Bill is important to me. I am delighted that the Government are supporting it. When I was chair of Save the Baby, I helped to raise vital funds for research into miscarriage and early pregnancy complications. I know just how frightening and consuming difficulties relating to pregnancy and childbirth can be. My own children have been in intensive care, and, to be honest, I struggle to talk about that even now—it was so traumatic.
One in seven babies born in the UK requires some kind of neonatal support. For parents whose newborn is put into neonatal care, the pressures and challenges are huge. This important Bill will give them up to 12 weeks’ additional leave and pay so that they can spend that vital time with their baby. According to European Standards of Care for Newborn Health, the active involvement of parents in their baby’s care on neonatal wards can reduce the period of neonatal care, improve new-born weight gain and breastfeeding rates, reduce antibiotic exposure and readmission rates, improve child behaviour, and reduce post-natal depression and parental stress and anxiety. For so many reasons, the Bill will have a dramatic benefit for families and long-term baby outcomes.
In the 2019 Queen’s Speech, the Government included a commitment to neonatal leave. As a country, we have certainly faced unprecedented challenges since that speech, but it is important that we honour that commitment. In February last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) spoke in his Adjournment debate on neonatal leave and pay of his own experiences of having a son in neonatal care for 72 days. At that time, the Government confirmed their commitment to introducing legislation on the matter. Last May, the then Labour Markets Minister reaffirmed that commitment. He said:
“The Government is committed to introducing Neonatal Leave and Pay to meet this need and will bring forward legislation when Parliamentary time allows.”
I understand that there are many pressing matters that we, as a Government, need to focus on, but it is equally important that we do not lose sight of the things that matter day to day for our constituents. Neonatal care is such a key issue. Imagine having to choose between going to work or being with your sick or premature new-born child, and you will see just how important this matter is.
On behalf of future parents, I heartily welcome and fully support the private Member’s Bill of my friend, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, and I also support the amendments.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the eloquent and moving speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) and other Members across the House. This is an important Bill.
I pay tribute to the special care baby unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) but is frequented by many of my Clwyd South constituents. The maternity unit there was under some degree of threat about seven years ago, and I campaigned alongside many others for its retention. Using information provided by the special care baby unit, I will mention a little about what it does, because one aspect that we should include in this debate—I will come to parents and families in a minute—is the fantastic dedication, skill and care of all those in the health service who look after babies, and their families, in neonatal care.
The unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital has 12 cots: one stabilisation or short-term intensive care cot, two high-dependency cots, and nine lower-dependency cots. The babies are cared for by a team of medical staff, led by a paediatric consultant, and a team of specially trained nursing staff, supported by healthcare support workers, neonatal outreach, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, and many other professionals who work in the team. A Bliss volunteer also attends the unit every Wednesday from 10 am to 12 pm to provide emotional support. I say that not only to pay tribute to the hospital that serves my constituency so well, but to highlight the sheer skill of the people there and the wide range of complex processes that are required to ensure that babies are properly cared for in neonatal units.
As has been mentioned, one in seven babies born in the UK receives some level of neonatal care shortly after birth. Many people who have not had the experience of a baby in neonatal care—such as my wife and I, because our children did not go to neonatal care—would be surprised by that high number of babies, which further commends the Bill that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) has brought forward. I commend him for persevering with it, because it is to everyone’s benefit. As has also been mentioned, about 50,000 babies in the UK spend more than one week in neonatal care after birth every year. For many families, the inflexibility of current parental leave laws exacerbates those issues and adds to the stress for the whole family.
When the Government launched a consultation in October 2019, it found overwhelming—almost unanimous —support for what the Bill proposes. Some 99% of respondents agreed that parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care should have access to additional weeks of leave and pay; 93% supported the proposal for a right to neonatal leave from the first day of employment in a role; and 81% felt that the maximum number of weeks for neonatal leave should be the same as the maximum number of weeks for statutory neonatal pay. As I said, I commend the hon. Member for bringing forward the Bill and I am delighted that it has unanimous, cross-party support. Under the terms of the Bill, families will be entitled to paid leave if they meet the minimum service and earning requirements, and leave and pay will last for a maximum of 12 weeks on top of their other parental entitlements.
It is estimated—this important point has not been drawn out in the debate so far—that the annual cost to the Exchequer of neonatal care leave, if paid at the statutory flat rate, would be £14.2 million a year on average, alongside the one-off cost of £5 million required to update His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ systems. To be honest, that is not a large amount of money compared with the figures of billions of pounds that we hear mentioned in the House, and given that one in seven babies receives some level of neonatal care, it addresses a vital issue.
Dean Russell
As mentioned earlier, it is also important to look at the long-term anxiety and depression among parents from what could happen—ultimately, there is trauma in those first few weeks. When we look at the statistics, we see that many more people are taking sick leave for mental health and wellbeing reasons, which ultimately means a loss of income and damage to the individual, as well as a loss to the Treasury. I wholeheartedly agree that there is an economic argument and a very personal, long-term one.
Simon Baynes
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and fully subscribe to his points. If it is not indelicate to say so, I felt that the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn about how traumatic it is for her to recall the experience, even now, make the point about the mental health issues that lie at the heart of this matter better than anybody could.
With regards to the Wrexham Maelor baby care unit, I mentioned Bliss, which we have already discussed this morning. It is a key charity that supports parents with sick and premature babies, and I commend that charity on having campaigned since 2014 to extend leave and pay for parents of babies in neonatal care. In 2019, Bliss conducted a survey that found that two thirds of fathers of premature babies had to return to work while their baby was still receiving neonatal care, and in 2018 that charity ran a campaign encouraging people to call their MPs
“to put pressure on the Government to extend leave for parents of babies in specialist care.”
Bliss noted that over 90% of MPs were reached through that campaign.
There have been many other very articulate and eloquent submissions, including from Catriona Ogilvy, founder of The Smallest Things charity; Sophie, a midwife from Tommy’s, the largest pregnancy charity in the UK; Jane van Zyl, chief executive of Working Families; and Caroline Lee-Davey, chief executive of Bliss. They have all pointed out that this is a vital issue, as has been said already this morning, and I am so pleased that we can come together in the House today to send the Bill further on its way.
Alex Davies-Jones
While the hon. Member is mentioning all the fantastic work that charities do to support parents every day, will he join me in commending the work of Ronald McDonald House Charities, which supports parents who—like his constituents—have to travel to access specialist services, and need support and accommodation so that they can be with their babies when they are separated and far from home?
Simon Baynes
It gives me great pleasure to support the hon. Member’s comments—she also made a very moving and eloquent speech this morning, which will stay with me for a long time. The point she makes about outreach on neonatal care is one of the points that was made in Wrexham Maelor’s description of what it does. From the farthest west of my constituency—in Corwen, Llandrillo or Cynwyd—it is a long way to Wrexham Maelor Hospital. Indeed, in Wales generally people have to travel a long way to get there. This goes back to the point about the complexity of what is supported, but I certainly support the hon. Member’s comments.
In conclusion, I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East on bringing this Bill through the House, and I am pleased and proud to support it.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), and like everybody else, I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for promoting this important Bill. I am probably going to waffle a little bit, because I have had printer problems and technical problems this morning, so my speech will be as it comes, so to speak.
In this place, we get to see and be involved in so many things. I had had no engagement with neonatal care until I started to do a little bit of research for this Bill. I have been fortunate in my life in that sense—there have been other things that have affected us—but when we start to look at those things, we find organisations that are not necessarily in our constituency, but might be close to our constituency. I want to talk a little about the support that is out there, which demonstrates the importance of this Bill, and specifically about a charity that is based in a constituency neighbouring mine, which is called Leo’s. Leo was a child who was lost by a parent, but he was the first of twins; the second twin, Oska, survived. The charity was founded on the basis that Leo had given his life for his second twin.
How a parent goes through that, I cannot comprehend. I have one child, who is very healthy, and I am very thankful for that, but once we start to think about these sorts of things, it is so easy—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I am getting emotional already, and it is not something I am even close to in that sense. I want to emphasise how much these parents suffer from the pressures on them and from mental health problems. One of the stats on the website is that 79% of parents have mental health challenges as the result of going into neonatal care. I do not understand why it is not 100%. It must be so traumatic to go through that space.
I understand that Leo’s was instrumental in founding Neonatal Mental Health Awareness Week. That shows that when something touches somebody really deeply, they go out and reach people in other areas that they probably never imagined they would get into. Some of the speeches that we have heard show the connections that people have made. As I say, I have no particular connection to this issue, other than that it has touched me as I have looked into it a little bit for this Bill. So really, I just want to emphasise the need to do things for parents in this situation. They have enough of a challenge without having to worry about where the next penny is coming from, so I support what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has brought forward in this Bill and commend him for it.
This issue is not just about the now or the immediacy of the issue; it is about going forward. One thing I noticed, I think from earlier this year, was the number of referrals to the charity. It has had some funding from County Durham Foundation Trust and elsewhere, but it is now oversubscribed and has had to stop referrals, I think for the first time, because there was just so much demand. That shows the scale of the issue—I think there are about 3,000 cases a year in the north-east alone, apparently.
I could waffle for a little longer, but I feel like I am going round in circles a bit. I commend the hon. Member and thank him for bringing the Bill forward. As he said, we do not always speak with such unity across the House, particularly those of us in the north-east, who are quite close to the Members in Scotland. I will conclude there, Mr Deputy Speaker, and will try to find my notes for the next debate before I get there.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on bringing this Bill through the House. It is an important piece of legislation that will support so many families around the UK. Neonatal care for premature and sick babies can have long-lasting impacts on a family, as we have heard, even once the baby is well and able to return home. Those impacts range across logistical challenges, family dynamics and even the future attainment of the baby.
Bringing in additional care leave will, in the short term, alleviate the stress caused when one parent has to return to work. Paternity leave provides for only two weeks of leave from work for the 50,000 families who spend more than one week in neonatal care after birth every year. The father’s chance to bond with the baby and support their recovering partner is severely limited. Seventy per cent. of families with a significant neonatal stay report that one parent had to return to work while the baby was still receiving care in hospital. The pressure that puts on the remaining parent, as they make crucial decisions alone for their child, have to remain in hospital while recovering themselves or face issues around childcare for older children, is immense.
In rural areas such as my North Devon constituency, families also have to face the challenges of getting to hospital, especially if one parent returns to work and the other cannot drive and has to rely on very sparse public transport. With longer maternity leave and pay entitlements, the parent left with the child is often the mother.
In families who do not require neonatal care, the childcare burden still falls disproportionately on women. In 2018, Government research found that fewer than one in five of all new mothers, and 29% of first-time mothers, return to work full time in the first three years after maternity leave. In the childcare and early years survey of 2021, around 71% of mothers with children aged nought to 14 were in work. For new mothers, however, staying with the same employer is associated with a lower risk of downward occupational mobility, but also a lower chance of progression. A previous study found that a third of women returners reported a reduction in job status. Overall, it found that women were less likely to return to work if they had not received any maternity pay at all.
Although there has been notable progress in maternity leave and, of course, paternity leave, the life of mothers when they return to work and how it affects their career progression and productivity has been less talked about. The burden on a mother facing exceptional care and health needs for their child is even higher. At present, parents of premature babies have to leave their children at an earlier stage of development than other parents. This leads to many mothers reconsidering their plans and either significantly delaying their return or leaving the workforce altogether.
Boosting productivity is crucial to boosting economic growth. Enabling more women to confidently return to work after maternity leave will not only reduce the gender pay gap, and the gender gap in senior leadership positions, but boost our economy. This Bill not only supports families but helps British businesses to manage parental leave. Parents often resort to statutory sick pay while their child is in hospital. This is not a suitable replacement for appropriate leave and pay, both for parents and for employers. Unlike neonatal pay, employers are unable to reclaim the cost of statutory sick pay, so the current system comes at a significant cost to businesses.
Ultimately, a more stable family life benefits babies as they grow. Seventy-one per cent. of families report that they are worried about the long-term outcomes for their pre-term babies. Neonatal care prevents a lot of typical bonding, such as skin-to-skin contact, feeding and other regular care. This bonding has been shown to improve weight gain and motor reflexes, and even reduce pain, as the child grows. By giving parents the right to neonatal care leave, on top of maternity and paternity leave, families will have more time to bond, increase their confidence in parenting and reduce separation and financial stresses.
We all want the best for our children, and supporting families as they face the challenges of neonatal care helps to give them the best start in life. As is so often the case on a Friday, we do our best work in this House when we are together. I am delighted to support the Bill today.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
This is a good measure proposed by a good and thoughtful Member of Parliament, with whom I have worked in the past on other topics. I know him to be a man of considerable integrity and compassion. It is a delight to support him today. I will not, as other colleagues have struggled to, name the three parts of his constituency. [Laughter.] Okay, I will have a go: Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you.
We have heard a number of powerful speeches in which Members have talked of their own and their constituents’ experience of neonatal care. I hope it does not upset the House if I take a slightly different angle because, in all such measures, we have to recognise that there is always a surplus of wants and needs of varying degrees of validity—this being one that has high validity—but all of which come with a cost to society. It might be a cost to the taxpayer that makes it harder for us to fund other public services, or it might be a cost to businesses that makes it harder for them to increase employment, increase growth or achieve profitability. This Bill is a good example of balance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) pointed out, there are aspects of the Bill that will enhance value for businesses by strengthening the ability of families to go back to work after a period that may have been very traumatic and testing for them, but I decided to go to that trusty steed for parliamentarians, the impact assessment.
I do not know whether other Members read impact assessments, but I am seeing many nods around the Chamber, so I hope I am not repeating what they already know. Impact assessments are a valuable tool for us as legislators: they are an essential element of our ability to understand some of the costs and benefits of legislation, and not just financial costs and benefits. Let me gently suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister—I can say it to this Minister, because I know he already agrees with me—that in recent years Governments have got into the habit of not carrying out impact assessments as regularly as they should, which is a concern for us as Members of Parliament. The Minister will be aware of the House of Lords report “Losing Impact”, which demonstrated that decline. A gentle nudge, as part of the Bill, would reinforce the value of these assessments.
Let me now draw the House back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) about the costs. The reason the Bill is a demonstration of the good balance between a public policy and the burdens on society—and, in this case, on business—is the widespread impact that it will have. I think my hon. Friend said that one in seven births in the UK would be covered in some way by this definition of neonatal care. That applies both to premature babies, where I think the proportion is approximately two thirds—40,000 out of 60,000—and to at-term babies, where the proportion is about 10%, or about 60,000. The Bill will therefore have an effect on quite a large section of our population.
Interestingly, owing to the subtlety of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, the Bill recognises that money is not the answer here. There are so many emotions going on, so many feelings and sentiments, but the Bill’s value lies in its recognition that a bit of help at the margins from society can help families at a particular time of need. We are coming together as a society and saying, “We are a better society if we demonstrate our recognition that people are going through a crucial period that can create an enormous amount of stress and pain for certain families, and certainly a tremendous amount of anxiety.” As others have mentioned, people may then feel that they can return to work more rapidly.
It does concern me, however, that it will cost HMRC £5 million to make a one-off change to its IT systems, and I should be grateful if the Minister could provide a detailed assessment of where that £5 million will go. I know he is not responsible for HMRC—that responsibility rests with the Treasury—but, as he is the Minister responsible for what we are discussing, he may wish to understand why that cost is of such great significance. The other costs are ongoing costs to businesses, but there is a separate issue for businesses which relates not just to their financial costs but to their legal liability.
This is a right that will extend to businesses of all sizes, from the very large multinationals all the way down to businesses that may have only one or two employers. Could the Minister clarify whether the right in this instance is only a right on application by the individual concerned to their employer, which I think it is? If so, what has been the assessment of legal risk and liability for an employer should an employee first not claim that right, and then claim it subsequently? There is quite a long period during which an employee can claim the right, and, with the best will in the world, some small businesses do not keep records or information and may miss something. Is there something here on the legal risk? It is really just about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, but I draw it to the Minister’s attention because the impact assessment says that
“this leave entitlement will create a minimum standard for an issue which is difficult to navigate for employers and employees.”
A bit of clarification on that point would therefore be helpful.
The impact assessment asks:
“Does implementation go beyond minimum EU requirements?”
Hon. Members—certainly those on the Government side—will not be surprised that the answer given is “yes”. Given that people chose to take back control, and given the strong support for understanding what is in the vital and particular interests of the United Kingdom, the Government are taking the implementation of this measure beyond minimum EU requirements. I am sure that we are all pleased about that.
Earlier, I raised with the Bill’s promoter proposed new part 12ZE and proposed new section 171ZZ16(2)(a), which relates to the definition of neonatal care. I think that he and I agree that regulations may define that, and he made a good point about how neonatal care should not necessarily relate only to time in a neonatal care unit. I think that regulations permit the broader aspect, but it would be helpful for the Minister to clarify that.
My contribution has come from a different angle from other colleagues. Perhaps it has been a passionless, emotionless contribution—[Hon. Members: “Never!”]—uncharacteristically. Nevertheless, when we in this House pass measures, it is important that we bear this in mind, as we are doing today. I think we are all agreed that this measure passes the test of balance, particularly in relation to the Exchequer. I will come back with a different view on a later Bill, but, in closing, I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East on this Bill.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
May I be the final Back-Bench Member to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for getting his Bill to this stage? I also pay tribute to Bliss for all the brilliant work it has done not just in this area but on a whole range of campaigns relating to it. I am biased because I used to run charities, but they play such an important role in pushing us to understand and, in turn, legislate on issues that perhaps we would not think about in the daily rush of this place. It takes a lot of work, and it does not happen just like that. Those charities have to push for months and years—sometimes even longer. Bliss has done a brilliant job in this case.
I do not have children, but, as it happens, my little sister was seven weeks premature, so I have some sense of what a worrying, stressful time that is. I was old enough to feel that as a child, and it was much worse for my mum and dad. As my sister came out that early—it had to be done in an emergency—she was in an incubator. She weighed 4 lb 4 oz. Everybody kept saying, “She weighs two bags of sugar.” I checked yesterday and that is correct—it is exactly two bags of sugar. During that time in the incubator, she ripped her breathing tube out at least twice. She did not have any sense of what she was doing, but she ripped out this vital thing that was trying to keep her alive and get her to a healthier position. She will not thank me for saying that that may have been an indication of the personality she was going to have as an adult—[Laughter.] No, we are very close. Although I do not have children, one does not need them to understand how completely obvious it is that this Bill is so important and why the hon. Gentleman has done such a good job.
In preparing for this debate, I read the statistic that in the Government’s consultation 99% of people supported the statutory leave and pay we are bringing in here. That is the sort of figure we hear from a dictator when they are giving themselves more power or installing themselves for life. They say, “Look, 99% of my people voted for me to be the leader forever.” I am happy to give way to anyone who has heard of anything like this before, but I have never heard of a Government consultation where 99% of people were in favour of something. That is why this move is such a no-brainer.
I was sad to read the study by Bliss about the parents who had got into financial difficulty as a result of this period in their lives. They had had money worries; often, they had taken on debt. It goes without saying that this situation has had an impact on mental health; I suspect the real figure is 100%, but 80% at least admitted that it had had an impact on their mental health. Although this measure is the morally right thing to do, we also have to see this from the point of view of employers. They are not going to get the best from someone who has a baby in neonatal care, because that is, of course, going to be their No.1 priority.
A bigger point is involved here: without this important Bill, debt and mental health issues would carry on for people as a result of these situations, and those two things have a big impact on people’s relationships and, in turn, the raising of their child. We know that when certain big things are going on in someone’s home they can create big conflicts and can lead to relationship breakdown. Just having debt and mental health issues in their house can affect a child’s development, as of course do things such as low birth weight. This Bill is therefore part of a broader approach that we have to take to the raising of children and the importance of parenting and of early years. Too often, this is one of these things we just leave people to get on with; the view is, “It will come naturally to you. We will just leave you.” We should be doing a range of things better to help parents in the early years with their children, right from birth.
So I am very pleased to support the Bill, which complements some of the other things the Government done on shared parental leave and so on. We know that we have further to go and that there are some big disparities in the care that certain families—ethnic minority families and those on low incomes—are receiving compared with others. Unfortunately, a couple of my constituents have been affected by the issues at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which Donna Ockenden is currently looking at; sadly, they lost their daughter, Wynter. So we know we have huge disparities here, but in the Government’s women’s health strategy we have exactly the right ambition—we are not there yet—to try to make this country the best place to give birth in. This Bill is an important component in helping us try to get there.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I join the great queue of people congratulating the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on bringing this hugely important private Member’s Bill forward today and on all the work he has done on it. I also congratulate all the hon. Members who are here to support it. I thank and congratulate Bliss, the charity Working Families and the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies for all the work they have done to campaign for this legislation, which will help so many families across the country. With all the Members lining up to support the Bill, it begs the question as to why it has taken so long to get here, when it has been promised for many years. Labour is absolutely committed to supporting it and to extending statutory maternity and paternity leave. The need for it could not be more real or more acute.
As colleagues have noted, the Bill will bring in an entitlement to neonatal leave for both parents while a baby is receiving hospital care for parents who qualify for maternity, paternity or adoption leave. It will introduce an entitlement to neonatal pay for parents who meet minimum service and earning requirements. That means in practice that qualifying parents will be entitled to additional leave and pay if their baby spends at least seven days being cared for in a health setting—or other place, as has been outlined—before they reach 28 days of life. It will also mean that qualifying parents will be entitled to up to 12 weeks’ paid leave, and that leave will be taken after maternity, paternity, adoption and bereavement leave, and may be taken within 68 weeks of first admission to neonatal care.
I also welcome the employment protections in the Bill, including protection from dismissal or detriment as a result of having to take leave at this stressful time of a parent’s life. I remember my shock, after my third child was born, on being told that he would have to be taken into the special care baby unit. You just do not plan for that. Birth cannot really be planned—I do not know why women are asked to fill in a birth plan, but that is another issue—because what actually happens can change very rapidly. There is a moment when, instead of what you thought was going to happen—having family come around to visit your child and take them home—you are suddenly consumed with worry about what will happen. I am grateful to Members who have spoken about their own personal circumstances, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who has supported neonatal care leave ever since she was elected. Her story and that of her son Sulley shows the need for this legislation to enable parents to focus on care for their children and not to worry about whether they can take leave, if they will be paid or if even they will be dismissed.
The Bill will come as a huge relief for parents across the country. According to Bliss, the charity for babies born prematurely or ill, around 70% of families with a significant neonatal stay had at least one parent return to work while their baby was still in hospital. Bliss also found that 60% of fathers and non-birthing partners had to return to work while their baby was still receiving specialist neonatal care, and that 36% of dads resorted to being signed off sick in order to spend time with their baby on the neonatal unit. I think that is why the Bill is welcomed by businesses that are trying to get around that in other ways. This will be much more straightforward and clear for all concerned.
Some 24% of fathers said they were concerned for their job if they asked for more time off, 77% of parents felt their parental leave was not long enough, and half of all parents would have liked to take more parental leave but could not afford to take any more time off. Shockingly, 11% of parents left their jobs due to having insufficient leave after their baby was admitted to neonatal care. That is not good for them and not good for businesses either. Thankfully, many return home with their families after just a few days of care, but as we have heard, around 50,000 babies spend more than a week in neonatal care every year.
There is clinical evidence to suggest that babies in neonatal care have better outcomes when their parents are involved in providing hands-on or skin-to-skin care while they are in hospital. The neonatal environment is stressful, and parents need time to bond and adjust. Some babies will also have significant ongoing needs once they return home and may not be ready to be left in childcare by the time parents have to start work again. Yet every year thousands of parents have to return to work when their baby is still critically ill, relying on other family members, friends and support from elsewhere to enable them to continue their care and their work. Also, some babies will spend many weeks or months receiving care on the neonatal unit before they are well enough to go home. This means many parents use large amounts, or even all, of their leave entitlement before their baby goes home, and once they go home they have to face all that need for leave as well.
Many employers are understanding. As has been said, many do the right thing and follow best practice in this area, and the majority of businesses have shown support for making expectations for this leave clear and the ability for them to reclaim a percentage of statutory pay. The Bill will mean that parents will not have to rely on good will or the views of different managers, and they will not fear repercussions, because they can be assured of leave and protection from dismissal.
I want to end by asking the Minister a number of questions, while I have his attention here on a Friday morning. First, while it is welcome to see a number of private Members’ Bills progressing workers’ rights, does the Minister not believe that measures such as those we are discussing today would be best brought forward as a comprehensive employment Bill in this Parliament? It was announced in the Queen’s Speech in December 2019 but has been missing in action ever since. Today we will discuss the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill has already been supported, and the Carer’s Leave Bill has been passed, but the Fertility Treatment (Employment Rights) Bill remains a private Member’s Bill. All these pieces of legislation and more could be addressed in one place, much more comprehensively and clearly: an employment Bill.
Secondly, legislation to improve workers’ rights is vital, but without strong enforcement, unscrupulous employers will continue to break the law. Can the Minister update the House on what progress is being made on a single enforcement body for workers’ rights, to protect against discrimination?
Thirdly, the absence of neonatal leave is just one barrier that expectant and new mothers face in the workplace. What steps are the Government taking to tackle discrimination in the workplace against women and ensure that no one is discriminated against for having a child?
Fourthly, maternal and paternal leave is critical to new parents, but the UK’s statutory allowances and shared parental leave system leave much to be desired. Will the Government extend statutory maternity and paternity leave and urgently review the shared parental leave system, to give parents the time they need with their new baby? This is all part of the reason why the Bill has been brought forward.
It is often the trade unions that are on the frontline against unscrupulous employers, supporting parents and making sure they receive their rights—rights that are being extended today—but the thanks they get from this Government for protecting workers is a constant barrage of attack and some of the strictest trade union laws in Europe. I am proud to work alongside our unions. Will the Minister stop the Government’s attempts to undermine trade unions, such as those we saw earlier this week?
Let me end by thanking the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East again for spearheading this fantastic piece of legislation. He and parents across the country can rest assured that it has the full support of the Labour party.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)
I thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for all his work in bringing forward this very important legislation. It is a great honour to bring forward a private Member’s Bill. I have been lucky enough to bring forward two: one on guardianship, and one that sadly has a connection with this Bill, on parental bereavement, of which the hon. Member was very supportive. It is not just a great honour; it is a great deal of work, and I pay tribute to him for all his work on this Bill over the last month. We often get asked when we bring forward new measures such as this, “Does not that exist already?” When we get that reaction, it is time we moved quickly to bring the legislation forward. I thank him and all Members who have spoken on this important matter today.
I also thank my predecessors. I have only been in this role a short time, which has been a common feature of small business Ministers over the last three months. Many of my predecessors have done hugely important work on this issue, not least my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and for Watford (Dean Russell). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Watford for his contribution today and his wholehearted support for this Bill and the next Bill that we will consider, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill. I know he is keenly awaiting that debate, as is the Bill’s promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). It is another important piece of legislation.
The Government are deeply committed, as I am, to ensuring that the UK is the best place in the world to work and grow a business. We need a strong and flexible labour market that supports participation and economic growth. The Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill will enable thousands of parents to care for and be with their children in neonatal care without worrying about whether their job is at risk. The Bill is supported across the House, and I was pleased to see that support reflected in today’s debate.
I wish to put on record the Government’s reasons for continuing to support the Bill, but let me first pick up a couple of points that hon. Members have raised. The shadow Minister—the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson)—and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) spoke about other measures that we might take forward in the employment Bill or by other means. The hon. Member for Pontypridd spoke very movingly, for which I commend her, but I think she said that the Government were eroding workers’ rights. I cannot think of anything further from the truth.
Let me set out some measures that the Government are taking, other than in this legislation. They are all measures for which I am responsible as a Business Minister: making flexible working a day one right, as we intend; allowing all workers a week of carer’s leave; providing more protections for people who are pregnant or returning to work from pregnancy or paternity leave; the tips Bill—
Alex Davies-Jones
I am sorry, but I cannot sit here and listen to the Minister saying that his Government are not eroding workers’ rights. They are literally bringing forward legislation to prevent workers from using their fundamental right to withhold their labour and go on strike. As any worker knows, that is the last armour that workers have to protect themselves. If the Government are not eroding workers’ rights, what are they doing?
Kevin Hollinrake
We can have a good debate about this a week on Monday, but the Opposition parties seem to be arguing simultaneously that minimum service levels exist across Europe, that strikes are happening across Europe, and that the two things are incompatible. Clearly we are not taking away the right to strike: we know that nurses have voted to strike on 7 and 8 February. We are simply saying, “Yes, you can strike, but put a voluntary agreement in place to have minimum service levels,” as the nurses do—a derogation, as they call it. The two things are not incompatible.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. With respect, this is the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill.
Kevin Hollinrake
I do apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. Several Members referred to the matter in this debate, so I felt I needed to address it, but under your instructions I will move on. Other Government measures, of course, include increasing the national living wage to £10.42, which we shall do very shortly—so we have a number of measures to strengthen workers’ rights rather than reducing them.
As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East explained, an estimated 100,000 babies in the UK are admitted to neonatal care every year following birth, for a range of medical reasons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) said, tens of thousands of children are in neonatal care for a week or longer, so the issue clearly affects many, many parents. In 2018, our study identified that 37,400 children were in neonatal care for more than a week after birth, so it is clearly a hugely important issue.
The United Kingdom has generous entitlements and protections designed to support employed parents to balance their family and work commitments and maintain their place in the labour market while raising their children. However, for parents who are in the worrying position of having their newborn admitted to neonatal care, it is clear that the current leave and pay entitlements do not provide adequate support. The Government consulted on the issue, and in March 2020 we committed to introducing a new entitlement to neonatal leave and pay. We are therefore pleased to support the Bill, which will bring that policy into effect.
As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East set out, the Bill will provide a statutory leave entitlement that protects employees against any detriment. Many considerate employers provide that anyway, but the Bill will ensure that the minority who perhaps do not must do so in future. The Bill gives a day one right to leave to anyone with a child in neonatal care for seven full days of continuous care. It is a right to pay based upon continuity of service.
I will touch on some points made by Members, but I first thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) for his work on this Bill. The issue was first introduced to the House in an Adjournment debate, which was responded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam. I know the hon. Member for Pontypridd has campaigned long and hard on this issue, as has the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies. We should pay tribute to all those people.
Many Members in this debate and previous debates have spoken about their personal experiences very movingly. I am the father of four children; our first child was in neonatal care, as he was very jaundiced when he was born. That is a massive worry for any parent. It is not just about the jaundice, as there can be other health implications including deafness. For the first child it is even more worrying. All those contributions resonated with me and, I am sure, others in the House.
The hon. Member for Cheadle rightly thanked the charity Bliss and other charities that support families through their difficult time. The hon. Member for Pontypridd also thanked the charity Bliss. She is vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies. I thank her for her work on that. She directed the House’s attention to her personal experience of this issue, as her son was born prematurely. I am grateful that her husband’s employer was flexible.
My hon. Friend the Member for Watford showed huge empathy, as always, for parents who go through that experience. He has much experience with the issue, having been the Minister in the Bill Committee at one point. He emphasised the impact that having a premature or poorly baby has on parents’ mental health. This Bill will massively help ease anxiety. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Putney, and the hon. Member for Pontypridd asked how long it has taken to introduce the Bill to the House. Legislation is never that speedy—only in emergency times, perhaps. This legislation was a 2019 manifesto commitment, and in 2020 we conducted a consultation. Clearly, there have been other issues that we have had to deal with over recent years, but we are keen to expedite this legislation and we are pleased to see it passing through its final stages in the House.
The shadow Minister also asked about a single enforcement body. We have this matter under review, but she can see that a tremendous amount of work is happening on other legislation that we are keen to bring forward. I am happy to have a conversation with the hon. Lady at any time about other measures that she would like us to implement. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) emphasised how the Bill will benefit fathers and non-birthing partners, as they will have leave to spend time with their child in hospital. She spoke of the benefits to businesses, as they will be able to reclaim the money via HMRC and have less financial burden.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) raised interesting points, as always. I was pleased to hear him talking about the potential impact on business. It is right that we consider that. We ask businesses to do more and more for employees, quite rightly. Nevertheless, we should always consider the impact. He talked about the impact assessment, which states that the financial impact on business is estimated at around £22 million per annum. That is an insignificant amount, and it is right to consider that, but on balance is the right thing to do.
My hon. Friend questioned why it costs £5 million for HMRC to set up the entitlement. That is a good question. As he said, I do not look after HMRC directly, but I am told that they need to update their IT systems and support employers and payroll providers to do the same. This is a sizeable project that is primarily a matter for HMRC and the Treasury, so he may want to ask a Treasury Minister. He also asked about the assessment of legal risk if employers do not claim at the time but claim later. The regulations will specify how long an employee has to claim entitlements to leave and pay, but the Bill specifies that it cannot be less than 68 weeks after the birth of the child. When it comes to pay, there is a power in the Bill that could require someone to still be employed by the same employer when the claim for pay starts. We acknowledge the point that my hon. Friend makes and it will be considered carefully when the regulations are drafted.
Richard Fuller
The Minister has just alerted me to a question, although I do not expect him to have the answer to it right now: there may be a change of employment situation for the individual between the moment they had their child and when they make their claim. Can he ensure that the regulations are flexible enough for the right claim to be made at the right time in the right way? More broadly, where there are statutory rights that individuals should claim, it should be easy for them to do it automatically. I do not know whether other hon. Members have the HMRC app—[Interruption.] No? They should get it; it is a really good idea. We should be moving to the principle that these are automatic things that individuals can control without having to go through a paper process. That is better for the individual, results in a higher proportion of claims and reduces the burdens on business, as well as ensuring they are more likely to be legally compliant.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments and I agree we should make the process as easy as possible to ease the burden on businesses. That is certainly something we will look at within the regulations.
We will also look at the definition of neonatal in the regulations, but hospital and outreach care and, tragically—as hon. Members have said—perhaps palliative care would be the key areas. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) told the moving story of her friend Kirsty, whose daughter needed neonatal care. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn shared her own experiences of a child who spent time in neonatal care.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) mentioned bags of sugar—I think bags of sugar are 2.2 lb each—and spoke about the other measures the Government are taking to improve workers’ rights. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) also paid tribute to the Bliss charity’s campaigning on this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), even without notes, spoke about the charity Leo’s, named after a baby who tragically died.
Without further ado, the Government are supporting this Bill in line with our ongoing commitment to support workers and build a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. It is good to see support in the House from across the political spectrum for this important measure, as is clear from this debate.
In conclusion, I thank civil servants who worked on the Bill: Rosie Edmonds, Tolu Odeleye, Roxana Bakharia, Abi Bridger, Bryan Halka, Jayne McCann and Cora Sweet, who is in the officials’ box today. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East to support the passage of these measures.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
With the leave of the House, I call Stuart C. McDonald to wind up the debate.
Stuart C. McDonald
With the leave of the House, may I first thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for confirming their ongoing support for the Bill? It really is appreciated. I too say a massive thank you to BEIS officials for their fantastic help throughout the process; while the broad principles of the Bill are quite clear and powerful, there is a lot of technical stuff involved as well and I am very grateful to them for their help.
More than anything, I am grateful to so many hon. Members from right across the House who have contributed in such a positive and powerful fashion. The personal is often the most powerful, and there were good examples of that today from the hon. Members for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), and for Wantage (David Johnston). My hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) talked about Kirsty’s experiences. The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) said he was waffling, but I thought he spoke powerfully about Leo’s charity, so I thank him for that. I am struck by the number of hon. Members who have repeatedly been here to speak about this Bill, including the hon. Members for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) and for Watford (Dean Russell), so I thank them for doing so.
Some hon. Members raised additional points that I had neglected: the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) spoke about neonatal staff, whom I also want to thank, having had the pleasure of visiting the neonatal unit in Wishaw, where the staff and the parents there at the time all spoke supportively about what this Bill would mean for them. He also made the point about the relatively limited expenditure this would entail for the Exchequer, something that the hon. Member—my hon. Friend—for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), also spoke about. He was very kind to me and scrutinised exactly what the Bill means, including the role of HMRC. If and when the Bill finally reaches the statute book, it will be all about pressing HMRC to get it up and running as fast as possible. The hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) rightly drew our attention to some of the specific challenges for those living in rural areas, as well as to the problems encountered by fathers in particular, who often have to resort to using sick pay, which is in nobody’s interest—theirs or the employer’s.
Importantly, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) takes me on to thanking all the charities that have made the case over many years that has got us to this place, including Bliss, which has been mentioned several times and was a key driver in introducing me to the issue, and the Smallest Things, whose representatives are here today, which has also done fantastic work. I also thank Pregnant Then Screwed, Tommy’s, Working Families, GRACE, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, Sands, the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, the all-party parliamentary group, which has been mentioned, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the TUC, Unison, NHS Lanarkshire, University Hospital Wishaw, Dr Michelle Weldon-Johns at Abertay University, and constituents and others from across the country who have been in touch with their own stories. They have made the powerful case that, hopefully, will get the Bill through the House of Commons today. I am also grateful to Baroness Wyld for agreeing to take it forward in the other place as it continues its journey, which I hope will get it on to the statute book in early course.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Monday 23rd January 2023
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Friday 24th March 2023
(1 year ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to sponsor the Bill in your Lordships’ House. I thank Stuart McDonald MP for steering the Bill so effectively through the other place. It has already achieved a minor miracle in uniting the Scottish National Party and the Conservative Party, as well as gaining cross-party support in the other place. I pay tribute to all those who have spoken so passionately and sensitively about their personal experiences of children born prematurely, including Luke Hall MP and David Linden MP. I give thanks to the APPG on Premature and Sick Babies.
I am enormously grateful to Bliss and other charities that provide vital support to parents of premature and sick babies in their time of need, and which have provided me with advice on the Bill. I want in particular to mention Tom and Anna, who are now both employees of Bliss, who came to see me and told me their personal stories and how they had been inspired to work to help other parents. It is not always easy to talk about these painful experiences, but I want to be clear that all who have campaigned for the Bill can take pride in seeing it come to fruition.
I am grateful to everyone who has put their name down to speak today, and to see such wide-ranging expertise from across the House. I know that this is a far-reaching, highly important and deeply personal issue for many here today, and I am sure we will have a very thoughtful debate.
The Office for National Statistics reports that an estimated 100,000 babies every year are admitted to neonatal care in the UK following their birth. Neonatal care is the type of medical or palliative care that a baby who was born prematurely or sick receives. Many of these babies spend prolonged periods of time on a neonatal care unit in a hospital as a result of being born prematurely or with other health conditions.
We know how incredibly worrying and stressful a time that is for parents. They of course want to get on and focus their attention on getting through this period, supporting their family, each other and their baby or babies. Unfortunately, though, some may end up with concerns about their ability to do so and to keep their jobs. Fathers, if eligible, get only two weeks of statutory paternity leave, and when that runs out they might be called back to work while their baby is still in hospital. For babies who have an extended stay to stay in hospital at the start of their lives, mothers report that the 39 weeks of paid maternity leave does not give them enough time. A large portion of that can be used up while their baby is in neonatal care, leaving them feeling that they do not have enough time at home with their baby before having to go back to work. It is important always to have at the front of our minds that children in neonatal care often have significant health or developmental issues that require specialist medical attention, which means that this does not end up being a usual form of maternity leave. I have heard at first hand that some parents even choose to leave work as a result.
The successful passage of the Bill will realise an important commitment from the Government to create a new statutory leave and pay entitlement for the parents of babies receiving neonatal care. That means that employed parents who find themselves in this desperate situation in future will know that, as a minimum, they are entitled to time off work to care for their babies and that they will not suffer detriment from their employer as a result.
Protected time off from work for parents who find themselves in this position is crucial. We know that there are some brilliant supportive and flexible employers out there, and I commend them and encourage others to follow their lead. Business representative organisations, including the CBI, have expressed their support for the plan to introduce neonatal care leave and pay. Employee retention has been identified as a key benefit of family-related leave policies, including neonatal care leave and pay and engagement with employer representatives. This is the right thing to do for families and for the labour market.
I will outline the key components of the Bill. It consists of three clauses and a Schedule. The main provisions of the Bill are found in the Schedule, which creates a statutory entitlement to neonatal care leave, creates a statutory entitlement to neonatal care pay and makes consequential amendments to other legislation, including adding references to neonatal care leave and pay where relevant. Neonatal care leave and pay will be available to each employed parent of babies who are admitted into neonatal care up to the age of 28 days and who have a continuous stay in hospital, or in other specified care settings, of seven full days or more. Neonatal care leave will be a day-one right, meaning that it will be available to an employee from their first day in a new job.
Statutory neonatal care pay, like other family-related pay rights, will be available to those employees who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests. I expect it to be paid at the statutory rate, currently £156.66, or 90% of the employee’s average wages—whichever is lower. This amount is usually uprated in line with increases to statutory payments.
As the Government have already set out in their response to the consultation on neonatal leave, the intention is that the total amount of statutory neonatal care leave available to parents will be capped at a maximum of 12 weeks; that will be one week for every week their child spends in neonatal care. This will be set out in the regulations under the Bill.
This leave will be protected. Those exercising the right to leave will have legal protection against being subjected to any detriment for doing so, consistent with other family-related leave entitlements such as paternity, maternity and adoption leave. It is worth your Lordships noting that this Bill is constructed to be in harmony with these other related entitlements.
Neonatal care leave will be flexible, allowing employees to take leave either when their child is receiving neonatal care or after that period. This means that fathers who have only two weeks of paternity leave may want to take their neonatal care leave while their child is still in neonatal care. However, mothers will be able to add it to the end of their maternity leave and other forms of parental leave that they may be entitled to. This is because, once maternity leave commences, a mother cannot stop it in order to take neonatal care leave, or else she will lose her remaining maternity leave.
With that in mind, the Bill provides for the window of time within which neonatal care leave can be taken to be set out in regulations. This window will be a minimum of 68 weeks following the child’s birth, as this ensures that mothers and fathers have sufficient time to take their neonatal care leave alongside other leave rights that they may be entitled to, rather than having to lose out on any such entitlements.
Eligibility for neonatal care leave and pay will be detailed in regulations but must be based on a parental or other personal relationship with the child in neonatal care. This is to ensure that the definition can be kept up to date to accommodate changing family dynamics.
Your Lordships will no doubt have noticed that there are a number of delegated powers in this Bill. We spend a lot of time, quite rightly, in this House talking about being clear about the need for delegated powers and how they will be used. The powers in this Bill mirror, in so far as is possible, the approach in existing family-related leave and pay entitlement legislation. Such powers have been on the statute book for some time and are well understood by employers and the legal community. A similar approach was taken most recently in the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, which was also a Private Member’s Bill. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report of 2 February had no concerns with the delegated powers process in the Bill. It said:
“There is nothing in this private member’s Bill which we would wish to draw to the attention of the House.”
I hope that gives noble Lords adequate reassurance on this matter.
We have an opportunity here to make a real difference to the lives of those who seek to rely on this entitlement in the future. I hope that, with the support of your Lordships, we can deliver legislation that parents who have been through a stressful time while having a baby in neonatal care, and the charities which work tirelessly to support them, can celebrate. I beg to move.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support this Bill and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, for introducing it to the House so brilliantly and comprehensively. It is a compassionate Bill that will help thousands of parents at a very anxious time of their lives: when their newborn baby is fighting for his or her life in a neonatal intensive care unit, is born prematurely with genetic or congenital problems, or is recovering from surgery or fighting to overcome infections. Tiny babies spend weeks or months, sometimes more than a year, connected to ventilators, feeding tubes or, in some cases, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines.
As an obstetrician, I have assisted at the birth of many such babies, well aware of their fragility, particularly of premature babies at birth, some of whom are no bigger than the palm of your hand. I recall stories of many babies who spent months in neonatal units, and I will give examples of some so that noble Lords can better understand the anxiety and stress that parents have to go through while their precious, often tiny child courageously fights for his or her life. This is a compassionate Bill not only for parents, but for these tiny babies.
One such story is that of Sarah Beattie, born 14 weeks prematurely weighing 1 pound 4 ounces—595 grams. She spent months in a neonatal intensive care unit fighting for her life. It is not difficult to imagine the stress, anxiety and pain her parents went through as Sarah was cared for in an incubator for several months in the neonatal unit. Thirty years later, it was my pleasure, as chancellor of Dundee University, to award her a degree in law.
Another story is of the parents of Peggy and Bodhi, born at 23 weeks and four days—at the margins of viability —during the pandemic, weighing 550 and 600 grams. Their parents, Alison and Jim, were told of the small chance of the twins’ survival and, if they did survive, of the risk of severe disability due to their prematurity. Alison and Jim followed a daily routine of visits to hospital, helping with the care of Peggy and Bodhi, going through anxious times and worry as the twins fought through breathing difficulties, cerebral bleeds and much more. Alison was off work for 17 months. Peggy and Bodhi are now two and a half years old, and Alison says they are perfect. She said that, as parents reflecting on their own neonatal experiences, it was tough, but nothing compared to what her babies went through.
Some parents are not so lucky, with partners having to go to work, financial worries, unsympathetic employers, the separation of parents at visiting times and much more hardship. Parents whose babies are in neonatal care for a long period are understandably worried and anxious. They often feel depressed, suffer from sleep deprivation and much more. They want to be with their baby as often and for as long as they can. They wake up at night wanting to see and be with their baby. Technological developments such as vCreate, developed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow, are now widely available in UK neonatal units. It provides a secure personal video link, enabling parents to see their baby all the time, with regular updates on their baby’s condition—a great advance and much appreciated by parents.
So, what are the good things in the Bill? It gives much-needed additional paid time off work for parents when their baby is in neonatal care. It will particularly benefit fathers and those taking paternity leave, enabling them to be present at the neonatal unit for longer when their baby is unwell. They will also be able to support their partner through the experience, emotionally and practically, including with the childcare of older children. For many mothers, when their partner returns to work they are left alone without support to receive difficult news and make life-changing decisions. The Bill will make it possible for both parents to be involved in their baby’s care. This is essential for neonatal units hoping to deliver care in a family-integrated setting. As research has shown, this improves outcomes both for babies and their parents.
I welcome that this will be paid, despite it being only at the statutory rate, as having a baby in hospital can be expensive, and most families cannot afford for one parent to take unpaid time off work. Research by Bliss found that, on average, families report spending £405 per week over their usual budget while their baby is in neonatal care. To support families through this troubling financial time, I hope many employers will offer neonatal care leave at a higher rate of pay than the statutory minimum.
I hope the Government will be sympathetic to dealing with what is missing from the Bill. In general, parents will be entitled to neonatal care leave and pay if they are employees and already qualify for maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, mentioned. However, this means that a group of parents—those who are self-employed, who are classed as workers or who do not meet the criteria for other reasons—will not have access to this vital support. Although employment support for this group of parents is not within the scope of the Bill, I hope the Government, and particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, will look seriously at reviewing how they can provide similar support to all working parents. I hope the Minister is personally sympathetic to that view.
The other issue is the lead time for implementation, which is extraordinarily long: parents will have to wait until 2025 before the Bill will be implemented. Surely it has to be possible to do this earlier than 2025, and help thousands of parents and their babies who will be born before 2025. I hope the Bill is the start of much-needed help for parents whose children have to be cared for in neonatal care units, particularly for long periods. I give it my strongest support.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
It is a great privilege and pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who has great experience and expertise in the area of neonatal care.
We have heard from Scotland, so I thought we should hear from Northern Ireland on the Bill. I am pleased to be in the House today to support its Second Reading. I recognise that, from a territorial point of view, the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland, as such matters are devolved. However, as with other Bills that have passed, I absolutely hope that it will be replicated by the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, once they are functioning again. The same is true of the previous debate, in which we heard about co-operatives, mutuals and friendly societies, which I was at one stage a Minister for in the Northern Ireland Executive. I listened with great interest and hope that the officials are already working with officials in Northern Ireland to make them aware of that Bill, which I hope will be replicated in due course.
Over 1,800 babies are born prematurely or sick each year in Northern Ireland and cared for in one of our seven neonatal units. Sometimes, of course, the neonatal care is planned for, because it is known that there is a difficulty in utero and it is diagnosed before the pregnancy comes to an end. In my case, when my youngest child was born, it was not planned at all.
I was about to be discharged home with my bundle of joy, all 9 pounds and 14 ounces of him, when the doctors came in to do their checks. First, the junior doctor came in, and he left without saying anything. A more senior doctor came in, and he left without saying anything, and then the consultant came in, and I knew that something was wrong. It transpired that my son had been born with a pulmonary stenosis, a congenital heart problem, and he was taken immediately to neonatal care. After just three weeks, he had surgery to deal with the issue at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, where they opened his valve. I remember, as a mother, watching him fall asleep on a huge operating-theatre table—he was just this tiny little baby boy. I want to mention his consultant, Dr Frank Casey, a wonderful paediatric cardiac consultant at the Royal Victoria Hospital. I can report to the House that my son is now a strapping 16 year-old rugby player, and absolutely doing very well.
I tell this story because having to rely on neonatal care can happen to any couple, and the Bill will allow the mother and the partner to be there to support each other and the little bundle of joy being cared for, without the additional worry about where the next pay cheque is coming from. Although my son was in neonatal care for a relatively short period, it can go on for months and years, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, indicated. That needs recognition, which is why I strongly support the Bill today.
I pay tribute to the proposer of the Bill in the other place and the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, for setting out the details and importance of it. I also acknowledge the wider work going on in early years, especially that of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, led by Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, highlighting the need for intervention in early years. I also acknowledge the recent early years review, chaired by Dame Andrea Leadsom, who was asked to bring that forward on behalf of the Prime Minister. That work is fundamental and has been widely welcomed by the sector. I emphasise recognising the importance of early intervention in those critical first 1,001 days, which begin at conception—it is important to remember that—because intervening early is important not only to the child and the family but to our society as a whole. It is wonderful that Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales is taking such an active role in her campaign to highlight this. It will really bear fruit in the future, when those little babies are adults.
I see the Bill as part of cherishing our young people from day 1, by allowing both parents to be present if there is a need for neonatal care and by taking away the worry about entitlement to leave by granting it as a day 1 right for parents whose children have spent at least one week in neonatal care. I thank the charities that have worked with the proposers of the Bill: I mention Bliss and, from a Northern Ireland perspective, TinyLife, which I have supported in the past—I know it does wonderful work with premature babies and babies who need to go into neonatal care. I strongly support the Bill.
Baroness Newlove (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be taking part in the Second Reading of the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill. We like long titles in this House, but we are actually speaking about precious lives who are so tiny. I stand today to support my noble friend Lady Wyld and the Members in the other place, but, more importantly, the Bill will support the many families up and down the country who are going through such horrific rollercoaster rides of emotions right now.
Life is so precious. I know that only too well—I had to make so many decisions before turning off my husband’s life-support machine, 48 hours after his brutal attack. I still have flashbacks of that beeping sound and guilt—did I do the right thing? I hear the switch clicking off, as his body fell silent.
The emotions of bringing a new life into this world when the pregnancy does not go to plan or if a baby is born at full term with complications mean that, more than ever, these families need the Bill to be enacted. The parents face so many unknown challenges that are certainly not in our parenting books. There are so many questions and decisions to be made, and having to do that on your own because of the 14-day paternity leave is so cruel. On many occasions in this Chamber, I have spoken about victims and survivors, because it is their stories that must be heard. Today, I speak up for families whose little ones are fighting to survive.
Let me introduce the House to Sam Bagnall, who I call “our little Sam”, and his doting parents, Zalena and Martin Bagnall, who are watching the debate on this stage of the Bill. Sam decided to come into their lives at a very early stage of her pregnancy: 24 weeks plus two weeks’ gestation. Mum had been on bed rest for a week, praying that she could get to the 24-week stage of viability. And he did, but that was where their lives—three lives—were placed on a hugely emotional journey of many tests, operations and making life decisions, with Sam’s tiny body fighting to survive. Can you imagine being constantly told, “We will do all our best, but you may have to say goodbye to Sam”?
Sam was born during Covid, which was hard on all families whose babies were due. However, Martin was able to be at the hospital because of furlough, which thankfully did not put a duty and helped alleviate the financial burden to some degree. It enabled him, as a father, to be by the side of his son and wife 18 hours a day. If he had been on the 14-day paternity leave, he would have had to live with the knowledge that, on day 15, Sam suffered a ruptured bowel. Three times, they were informed to say goodbye to Sam.
In our neonatal units, other mothers in the same situation become a community, so I will now speak about George. His mum had maternity leave and his dad had the 14-day paternity leave, but his work made him come back and he eventually had to go on sick leave. Another dad, who worked for a very well-known car manufacturing company, had sympathy from his bosses but was told to get back to work. His baby died without him being there; his wife and partner was alone.
Dads in particular need that extra time, especially when the baby is first born, because, sadly, that is when most of the complications are realised. The baby’s organs are so small and tiny, and there is so much pressure going around their body that their body collapses in some way. I too praise and thank Bliss for its excellent briefing, which was heartfelt to read and highlights the excellent work that is carried out across this country by many doctors and nurses. I call them “specialist angels”; what they do on a daily basis is just outstanding. Knowing that one in seven babies born in the UK is admitted to neonatal care really makes the Bill so important to ensure that we give the best to a newborn baby and their family.
I am not medical, even though I have enough ailments, but research shows that having both parents present releases oxytocin—I look to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to see whether I said that right—in the baby, as the baby recognises mum’s and dad’s voices. Mother nature is marvellous, as it also reduces pain in our babies’ bodies. Science shows that it is not just about mum and dad being there, it is also about being by each other’s side. It is so beneficial for that young life.
The Bill, which I support in all parts, will allow parents to take, I think, an additional 476 days off work at a time when it is most important. It takes away that guillotine of choosing work or spending such precious time with their little baby and supporting their partner.
Super Sam spent four and half months in hospital, and I commend Liverpool Women’s Hospital and Alder Hey for the superb support and time that they gave to Sam’s body and parents. Super Sam is now three years old. He has some disabilities, as his parents were informed may happen, to his sight, hearing, speech and mobility. But let me tell the House why we call him Super Sam. He is now learning to walk and to speak; he went to speech therapy this morning. He has some sight issues, but thanks to an invention, special glasses enable him to get around. Nothing puts Sam off, and he is now practising with a football. And he now has a little sister, Ava, who is absolutely beautiful and has turned one—and she bosses him around.
Giving this neonatal leave and pay will no doubt alleviate more anxiety and pain when someone no longer has to leave their partner’s side but can stand by their side and support them with the hands-on care that is so vital to that precious life—their baby.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, and all those who have promoted the Bill. Reading the briefing we had from Bliss made me want to say a few words on this particular measure. When the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, mentioned the two people, Tom and Anna, who were helping with Bliss, it made me think that we should note and appreciate that so many parents who have been through this trauma want to help others; it is a very important matter.
Many of us might think, “Well, why haven’t the Government done this already?”, because, when you read the kind of information we have in our briefings, you see that clearly there has been a vacuum of support and a very clear case that something needed to be done. It is good that we have been able to have people using the Private Members’ Bill procedure. In a way, this is what Private Members’ Bills are for—to bring attention to a real loophole that has existed—and I hope that the Bill can progress so that people who need this help will in fact get it. The case has been made and is clear, and we need to take this further as quickly as possible.
Those of us who have not had the experience of having a baby in neonatal care cannot fully comprehend this; we can listen to the experiences that have been brought to our attention by the two previous speakers, but I suspect that it is something that you actually have to experience to know the full impact. Whatever problems we have had individually, the idea of a child in an incubator with tubes is something that all of us would immediately be affected by. Childbirth is supposed to be—as well as potentially painful—very exhilarating and exciting; it is an important day and something that we remember all our lives. But we do have the assumption that things will go well, and, while we might have niggles at the back of our head that something could go wrong, if something does go wrong it must be absolutely devastating—the family’s plans go out of the window immediately.
If the figures in the briefings we have had are correct, we are talking about an awful lot of people who are finding life extremely difficult at a very critical time. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, just mentioned, with modern medicine, many of these babies need a great deal of care for quite a long time, and current provision for parental support is really not adequate for what we are talking about today. In this House, sometimes we have to ask ourselves: if this were us, what would we want and need? What would we want a member of our family to have, if they were placed in the same position?
The briefing we got from Bliss was extremely interesting, particularly the point that 36% of fathers of babies in neonatal care were actually signed off sick to try to provide the kind of support that was needed. That means that it is a very important issue, because the first few days, months and years of a child’s life are some of the most formative and significant in terms of forming the relationships and bonds that are so important for families going forward. The added anxiety of financial pressure is something that really needs to be taken into account.
I wanted to ask the Minister about something which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out: that some people will not fulfil the criteria that are mentioned in the Bill for getting this financial support. I know that regulations have to dovetail into each other, and that is not always the case, but there are some quite specific limitations in terms of who can be affected, and that will need to be considered further down the line.
I cannot resist the temptation to mention delegated powers. It was good to see that in the Commons the Henry VIII clause was removed, so we do not have to bring it up and complain to Ministers at this stage, which is somewhat unusual. There is also the question of timing because, again, in the Commons, the Minister estimated that perhaps in about 18 months’ time we might get round to have this provision. I think we could probably get some movement before that, if people really took this as seriously as they should.
I congratulate all those people who have been involved in this legislation. I would just say to the Minister that I hope that we can have joined-up provision. Mention has been made of maternity rights, but there may be other children in the family to think about and there are fathers as well as mothers. This is an opportunity to bring all the provisions together and make sure that we consider the impact on the family as a whole—parents and the baby in neonatal care as well as the other children in the family—because a lot of people need support in this kind of situation. But I congratulate all those involved and very strongly support the Bill.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to give my support to this Private Member’s Bill. I add my sincere thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, for all the work that has gone into preparing for this moment and for her very detailed, informative and passionate speech. I thank everyone who is taking part in what is actually quite an emotional discussion for many of us in the Chamber.
As my noble friend Lady Taylor said, I would like to thank Bliss for its dedication and for the information that it has provided us all with to inform this debate. It is true to say, as we can see when we look in Hansard, that there was a very good debate in the other place, and there are some real champions of the cause before us today. I would also like to extend my thanks to the families who have taken the time to give information and background on their own particular circumstances.
It is appropriate here today to extend our enormous thanks to the incredible staff in the NHS, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, highlighted in his moving speech. I had, fortunately, a very minor episode, whereby my latest grandchild, at the age of five weeks, had to go into hospital to be put on oxygen as a result of infection. To see at first hand the dedication of those staff, and all the other commitments that they have while caring for children, is remarkable, and we need to continue to remind ourselves of just how significant their contribution is.
To pick out some of the highlights, the issue around regulations is key, but we are hoping that the Bill will introduce two new rights: neonatal care leave and statutory neonatal care pay. Of course, both rights will require the Secretary of State to pass the necessary regulations, and we look forward to seeing, as we move forward, the details of how they might operate.
The other important element to highlight is the right to neonatal leave being a day one right available to employees. We have heard a great deal today about who would be covered and the time period. The issue of extending eligibility is one that we will need to revisit.
I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, is here today, because Northern Ireland obviously has a slightly different situation, in that employment law is a devolved matter.
When debating these matters, we get a significant list of statistics. One in seven babies born in the UK receive some level of neonatal care just before birth and an estimated 50,000 babies in the UK spend more than one week in neonatal care after birth. But what we have heard today and need to emphasise is that each one of those cases involves a child and an extended family, and each one of those situations will have very different circumstances. What we know from the feedback from families is that the current inflexibility of the parental leave laws actually contributes to the trauma that they experience and adds to the family’s stress.
The figures speak for themselves, in that more than half of families say that their finances were affected. One in four families have had to borrow money or increase their debt because of the baby’s neonatal stay, and 80% of parents have reported that their mental health became worse after the experience. We have heard a lot about the fact that this is not just a situation that relates to mothers; it is about fathers and non-birthing parents as well.
I emphasise the points that have been made about the importance of early bonding with babies. Those first few days and weeks are so important for children’s development, going into their early years, and we must do everything we can to enable those significant relationships to thrive and develop.
I also pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, that this is also about employers, and how actually this will bring benefit to employers. I think that, if you go out and talk to employers, you find that the vast majority would like to be able to be more supportive, but there is no framework to enable them to do so. We know that the Government have consulted with business and have had a broad range of respondents, and overwhelming support, and we need to take account of that in our discussions today. We have conversations on a repeated basis, as the Minister will be well aware, on many of the issues that prevent people from going back into the workplace. All those discussions are relevant to the subject before us today.
I emphasise the issue raised by my noble friend Lady Taylor. I do not know whether I am particularly susceptible to this—one of my older sisters had a significant stretch in hospital when I was about three from a very severe case of measles. I can remember vividly the fact that my parents were not around and that my grandparents suddenly appeared from nowhere; other carers came into my life. We were very fortunate in that respect. But what has not been highlighted, which I learned from my experience working to keep the children’s heart unit open in Leeds General Infirmary, and the other fact that we have to consider, is that many of the specialist units that these children will go into are not on the family’s doorstep. They often involve significant periods of time away from home for one or both parents, and this obviously has a knock-on effect for the entire family. We have to make sure that those elements are factored in.
We know that the Government have been active over the past three or four years. They launched a series of consultations under the Good Work Plan in July 2019, responded to that consultation in March 2020 and made a number of commitments, as we have heard. That commitment was also included in the text of the 2020 Budget, published the same month, which stated:
“The government will create an entitlement to Neonatal Leave and Pay for employees whose babies spend an extended period of time in neonatal care, providing up to 12 weeks paid leave so that parents do not have to choose between returning to work and taking care of their vulnerable newborn.”
The December 2019 Queen’s Speech included mention of an employment Bill that would introduce both the neonatal leave and pay rights, alongside a range of other commitments. The employment Bill was ultimately not introduced in the 2019-21 Session and did not appear in the Queen’s Speech of 2021 or 2022.
There has been a commitment from the Government, repeated on several occasions, including in the Good Work Plan, but sadly no action flowing from that. We must acknowledge our disappointment with the delay and the subsequent need to bring these matters forward in a Private Member’s Bill. I repeat that I pay sincere tribute to all those who have initiated and supported this Bill.
We are where we are, as we say, and I am very pleased to restate that those on our Benches are supportive of this Bill and hope that we can get assurance from the Minister about the speed with which he can act on behalf of the Government—indeed, to help the Government —to move forward and bring some relief to all those families who clearly deserve our support and help.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Johnson of Lainston) (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Wyld for bringing this important Bill forward for debate today. It is a great personal honour to be here to confirm the Government’s ongoing support for the Bill. The cross-party support for this initiative is significant; almost all parties represented in Parliament have supported this legislation specifically. I also thank Stuart McDonald for initiating the process that led to us being able to be here at this moment debating such an important topic. I am sure that we can agree that enabling parents to be with their babies when they are at their most vulnerable is clearly the right thing to do. I will address some of the comments made by noble Lords today in a moment.
Importantly, the Conservative Party manifesto in 2019 committed to introducing neonatal care leave and pay, stating that:
“We will legislate to allow parents to take extended leave for neonatal care, to support those new mothers and fathers who need it during the most vulnerable and stressful days of their lives.”
I am aware of discussions around larger pieces of legislation but, in my view, having had the privilege of taking through other similar Private Members’ Bills over the last few weeks, it is important that we do these right things and do not lose sight of the importance of these specific Bills in making people’s lives better and giving people protections. That is my priority today and I am grateful for noble Lords’ support, and the support of the body politic in general, for this Bill.
If it is helpful, I will go through some of the comments made by Members of this House in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, made a number of very relevant points, particularly outlining his expertise. I join him, the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Blake, and other Members who did not necessarily articulate it, in expressing my admiration for our doctors and nurses who care for our young babies when they come into this world, exemplified by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and his expertise and contribution to this area over his lifetime.
The noble Lord and others mentioned the time for implementation. If I may say, I too share a slight degree of frustration at the expectation of an 18-month wait between Royal Assent and implementation. I have investigated this myself, as noble Lords would expect, and I am afraid that there are legitimate reasons relating to the systems and processes—two words that really should not go hand in hand with such an important and emotive topic. They relate to the practicalities of implementing these measures and ensuring that HMRC has the right systems in place. A number of pieces of secondary legislation must also be enacted, which simply takes time. All I can commit to from this Dispatch Box is my personal commitment—I am sure that I also speak on behalf of my Secretary of State and other Ministers—to ensuring that this will be enacted as speedily as possible. We will not let the processes of government delay us except to the absolute minimum. We are targeting April 2025 and we will certainly make sure that, if we can enact any parts of this legislation sooner than that, we will do so.
It was quite right that the eligibility of other types of worker in our workforce was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Blake and Lady Taylor. It is felt that we want this to focus on employed workers. It is right to make sure that this mirrors our current maternity and other leave entitlements so that it can be effectively integrated into HMRC systems, pay systems and how businesses function.
I am perfectly aware of, and will take back to the department, the need to continually find ways to ensure that parents in this situation are able, with security, to spend time with their children. There are two very important reasons. First, it is a direct benefit to the health of the child. I would like to raise further in this debate the profile of the charity Bliss and to follow on from the comments about the parents who contributed to this work. This is a deeply personal, emotional and powerful subject. To share those experiences and to broadcast and propagate the importance of this mission is very meaningful. I congratulate them for this and hope to have the opportunity at a later date to do so in person. I hope that they are watching this debate and feel a sense of satisfaction that we continue to progress towards a suitable conclusion. My first point, then, is that it is absolutely right for the health of the child that parents are able to care for them in this difficult and essential period. It is also absolutely right, by the way, for the health of the parents.
My second point is that we must realise that there is a cost to businesses for these important social goods. We should not just ignore that fact. We as a society come together to decide how we want to structure ourselves, and how businesses respond to our needs and to important matters such as this is to be recognised—and I do recognise that. On the effectiveness of business, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and the need to make sure that people remain in the workforce, having a structure and framework for how neonatal care leave is taken is far more helpful than the current system, which relies, in effect, on the charity of businesses. Many are extremely forward-footed, very generous and very compassionate but, clearly, they do not have a framework in which to operate effectively.
It is therefore extremely useful to have clear rules, such as we are bringing to bear in other areas such as carers’ leave and so on, so that employees and businesses know how to interact with each other, what their rights are and what the expectations are. As a result of that, I think that we will have far more effective functioning of businesses. We can see from the studies and some of the statistics raised today by my noble friend Lady Newlove and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, the number of fathers who are simply taking sick leave or just not going to work. It is not as if , therefore, by not having these frameworks in place, we will somehow have more people in work and that the business situation will be solved. What is happening now is the worst of all worlds: a great degree of insecurity, a huge degree of uncertainty for business and poor outcomes for parents and children. The Bill will solve a number of very important issues. It is absolutely right in every respect and will be an important element of the framework for how we want to make our economy function.
I believe I have covered most of the points raised. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mentioned that the delegated powers have been taken out of the Bill, so I do not need to cover that in my speech, if noble Lords do not mind. I was very touched and moved by the personal stories of my noble friend Lady Newlove about the Bagnall family—I am very pleased that super Sam is thriving—and by the stories and important personal experiences related to us by the noble Baronesses, Lady Foster, Lady Taylor and Lady Blake, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and my noble friend Lady Wyld. I am very grateful to them for contributing to this debate in such a powerful way.
To conclude, these measures will provide valuable support and protection for parents during some of the most stressful days of their lives, when their children are in neonatal care. The Government are pleased to support this Private Member’s Bill and to deliver our manifesto commitment. Supporting the Bill is in line with our ongoing commitment to support workers and build a fairer, high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. It is good to see that there is such fabulous support from across the political spectrum in the House for this important measure, as is clear from today’s debate. I very much look forward to continuing to work with my noble friend Lady Wyld as the Bill progresses through the House.
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, I am enormously grateful to everybody who spoke today, and I shall take a few moments to reflect on some of the points that were made.
When I saw the speakers’ list and the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, I knew we would have a very moving debate. I said to him in the tearoom, “Try not to make it too moving because I will have to get up and respond to you without becoming wobbly”. He told stories and shared the memories that he has of all the people he has looked after, including Sarah and the other mothers and babies; they will remember him for the rest of their lives, and I pay tribute to him. I share his points about implementation; others have echoed those, so I will come back to that.
All I can say to the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and her 9 pounds and 14 ounces son, is that she is a stronger woman than I am, and I am so grateful that she spoke. I very much hope that this will be mirrored in Northern Ireland. She made very powerful points, as others did, about the importance of early years and the other work that is going on in this area, and for this legislation to be part of a wider picture.
My noble friend Lady Newlove always speaks with such passion in every debate she comes to. I thank her for bringing the real-life experience and bringing to life what people go through. As my noble friend the Minister said, thank goodness for super Sam, and I pay tribute to him. More widely, she said Sam is having language and speech therapy today. That underlines the point made by others that this is holistic; it is about children as they go through their early years. We spend a lot of time in this House—the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, said this—talking about when things go wrong later, such as family breakdown, mental health problems and young people offending. But the building blocks are there. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, that the Princess of Wales has shown great leadership on this—long may it continue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, talked about our attitude towards fathers. When we hear about skin-to-skin contact, the support for mothers, and the loneliness mothers face when they are in this situation and the impact on their mental health, I think we have a way to go in changing our attitudes towards fathers and what we expect to provide for them in these most crucial days.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, said, this was an emotional discussion, and I thank her very much for her support. I agree with her that there is more work to be done behind the scenes and I commit myself to doing that. I should have thanked those in the Bill team in my opening speech, who have been absolutely brilliant. Again, I thank my noble friend the Minister. I will push him on implementation and other issues, but I am sure he can cope. With that, I commend the Bill to the House.
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Tuesday 25th April 2023
(12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
Baroness Wyld
That the order of commitment be discharged.
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down for this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill
Tuesday 23rd May 2023
(11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 September 2022 - (7 Sep 2022)
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I have it in command from His Majesty the King to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill, has consented to place his interest, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Royal Assent
Wednesday 24th May 2023
(11 months ago)
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