Fertility Treatment and Employment Rights

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing this important debate and on her introduction. I am equally delighted to see the Minister in her place and, if I am allowed to say, slightly relieved that we have a Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Minister to talk about fertility and work, because too often in this place I come to talk about the menopause and work and am confronted with a Health Minister.

It would be expected of me to start instantly with a pitch for an employment Bill, because I make that pitch every time I come here. I say, “We need to have an employment Bill; we were promised it in the Queen’s Speech some years ago, but it is still not forthcoming.” I am going to put it in the hands of the Minister for Science and Investment Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) to produce the aforementioned Bill.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster for securing the PMB slot and making progress in that regard. We need to see some legislation around this. Make no mistake, this is a “women in work” issue. I know that is very gendered, and I am going to move away from that in a moment. But it is about securing women’s place in the workplace and ensuring that they keep opportunities. As the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) said, this is a fiscal issue, about the individual fiscal wellbeing of families and the economy as a whole.

There are very few points I want to make and I will be brief. We have heard it explained by other Members that IVF ends in failure for two thirds of parents going through it. It is a gruelling and stressful process, which is why flexibility in employment and adequate time off is so important. It is why we need employers to be understanding. We often talk about mental health in the workplace. I have spent the past 18 months talking about menopause in the workplace, and the importance of having policies in place in the workplace that support individual employees and a culture of openness, so that we do not have the secrecy, shame and fear of coming forward with these issues. People should be supported to take off the time that they need, and that should not be part of their holiday entitlement. We have heard that it can be long and gruelling. Most people’s holiday entitlement would simply not be enough.

I said I had made it a gendered issue, and it is not. The reality is that partners need to be there to support the woman who is going through IVF. We must recognise the need for same-sex couples to have that support, and the need for support to be available when surrogates are used. We may like to think about traditional family units, but families come in all shapes and sizes nowadays. It is crucial that we recognise there is a role for LGBT couples to get this support.

There are some great examples out there. I look at companies such as NatWest and Centrica, which have led the way in fertility policies in the workplace. I was pleased to hear from the Co-op, which employs in the region of 60,000 people in this country. Even in the past few weeks, it has published its policy on paid leave for fertility treatments, making the point that the time off provided is flexible and unrestricted. It makes the point that it cannot assume what individuals going through fertility treatment need. The measures extend to partners accompanying those going for fertility treatments, with paid leave for up to 10 appointments per cycle. That gives a measure of how significant a commitment that is, both from the individual and the employer.

We have a great deal of work to do in this area. It is too little understood and too little spoken about. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster for the great work she is doing in National Fertility Awareness Week to raise this issue.