Baroness Sugg
Main Page: Baroness Sugg (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Sugg's debates with the Home Office
Employment Rights Bill
Baroness Sugg ExcerptsWednesday 16th July 2025
(1 day, 18 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Employment Rights Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 113-II(a) Amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (15 Jul 2025)
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support Amendment 100. My noble friend Lady Penn and other noble Lords have made the case for this amendment clearly and compellingly. We have heard that better paternity leave can help increase women’s labour force participation and about the other benefits to the economy, and I would just like to add one more. It would also help to narrow the stubborn gender pay gap, which was still at 13.1% in 2024. I hope that all noble Lords would support narrowing that, but at our trajectory we will not reach gender parity for several decades without systemic change. If this amendment passes, it can be part of that change. Analysis of OECD data shows that countries that have more than six weeks paternity leave have a four percentage point smaller gender wage gap than those that do not. I hope that noble Lords from all sides will support this amendment.