Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay

Debate between Scott Arthur and Sarah Olney

Monday 27th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and the Petitions Committee for this debate. As a survivor of three maternity leaves—all on statutory pay—a c-section and a spell in the neonatal unit, all the topics that have been raised are very close to my heart. I thank each and every hon. Member for their contributions and for representing their constituents so well.

This summer, the Government announced that they would undertake a parental leave and pay review, expecting it to conclude in 18 months’ time. The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s commitment to that much-needed review of parental leave. Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the opportunity to flourish, no matter their background or personal circumstances. Too often, parents struggle on inadequate parental pay and without good enough access to shared leave. Childcare costs are eyewatering, and balance between family life and work has only become harder and harder to achieve. Not only is that unfair on families, but it weighs down our economy.

The Liberal Democrats have called for an overhaul of the parental leave system to give parents a genuine choice over how to manage their affairs in the first months of their child’s life. The Liberal Democrats were proud to introduce shared parental leave when in government. Years later, however, millions of parents are still being denied the choice to spend more time at home, with about a quarter of fathers ineligible for paternity pay.

Meanwhile, the Government are introducing wide-ranging changes to employment law through the Employment Rights Bill. The Bill will introduce a suite of new protections and entitlements for working families, including enhanced rights on leave, protection from dismissal and bereavement support. Eligibility for paternity leave and unpaid parental leave requires employees to have a minimum length of service in order to qualify, but from April 2026 the qualifying service requirements will be removed. That means that paternity leave and unpaid parental leave will become entitlements from the first day of employment, as the Liberal Democrats called for in our 2024 general election manifesto.

[Dr Arthur]

The Lib Dems may well have called for that in their manifesto, but when it came to a vote, they abstained on that very right for mothers. Does the hon. Lady now regret that?

[Sarah Olney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The Liberal Democrats support measures that work to strengthen employment rights. We welcome aspects of the Employment Rights Bill, such as boosting statutory sick pay, strengthening support for whistleblowers and increasing support for carers, all of which move us in the right direction. However, we remain concerned about the specific way in which many of the measures are to be implemented. We must ensure that the legislation strikes the right balance for employees and for business, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.

I have spoken with businesses in my constituency that tell me that they are being left in limbo by the vague framing of the Bill, which leaves crucial detail to secondary legislation and Government reviews. That prevents long-term planning, and I am disappointed that the Government did not support the Liberal Democrat amendments, which would have created more certainty for businesses.

New measures to support workers must go hand in hand with much-needed reforms to support our small businesses and bring down their costs. We know that the Government inherited a mess. We know that the cause of the mess is the legacy of reckless economic mismanagement by the previous Government, whose record is a dispiriting picture of low growth, high interest rates and a record fall in living standards. But it is disappointing that the current Government have taken decisions that have compounded many of the challenges for communities, businesses and families, while presiding over very tight public finances and a stagnant economy.

That is why we urge the Government to put in place a range of measures that will bring down business costs, unleash the power of our SMEs and power economic growth—measures such as scrapping the unfair national insurance rise, fixing the broken business rates system, bringing down the cost of energy by decoupling electricity and gas prices, and finally repairing the economic damage caused by the previous Government’s shambolic Brexit deal by cutting red tape and negotiating a new bespoke UK-EU customs union. Those actions could breathe new life into our economy and our small businesses and would go a long way towards facilitating improvements to parental leave and pay.

In our 2024 general election manifesto, we called for statutory maternity and shared parental pay to rise to £350 a week, for paternity pay to increase to 90% of earnings with a cap for high earners, and for the introduction of an extra “use it or lose it” month for fathers and partners, paid at 90% of earnings, again with a cap for high earners. Those policies would benefit not only families, but businesses and the economy, by encouraging workforce participation and making it easier for people to advance their career while starting a family.

We hope that the Government will look closely at those proposals, while introducing a robust plan to cut business costs, boost growth and empower our SMEs. More broadly, I urge them to look into the prevalent inequality in caring responsibility. What steps are they taking to support millions of family and kinship carers who have no paid leave at all? Will they commission a similar review into provision for unpaid carers and make carer’s leave paid?

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Scott Arthur and Sarah Olney

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 15th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney]

No, I do not think so. Forty-eight hours is a reasonable amount of notice in any sector. That is the kind of notice that enables, for example, parents to rearrange childcare, or other members of the family to rearrange their shifts. The 48 hours is a proper definition of reasonable notice, and 48 hours is 48 hours, whether you work on an oil rig or in a shop. I disagree that it is context-dependent.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I am passionate about ensuring that single parents can enter the workforce, and a big barrier to that is childcare. When thinking about which amendments the hon. Member will support, has she discussed the matter with any organisations representing single parents? Forty-eight hours does not seem like a lot of time.

[Sarah Olney]

As someone with a long history of having to arrange childcare at short notice, I am well aware of the limitations that needing to arrange childcare presents, particularly for working women, both those who are single parents and those in a relationship. Forty-eight hours is not ideal, but it is a reasonable compromise, and it is absolutely vital that employers have clarity about what “reasonable notice” looks like in this circumstance.

I wish to speak in favour of Lords amendment 48. Businesses, particularly those in the hospitality sector, that rely on seasonal workers are particularly vulnerable to changes in labour regulations and the knock-on impacts on the cost and availability of labour. The sustainability of farming businesses, for example, depends on being able to get the right people to the right place at the right time, and obstacles to that can have a big impact on ability to generate produce for sale, and therefore on the sustainability of the business. If we allow a different set of regulations to apply to seasonal work, a clear definition of “seasonal work” must be created to prevent employers from avoiding their legitimate responsibilities by claiming seasonal work in inappropriate circumstances. While we do not believe that this legislation should create contrasting employment law requirements for businesses, we continue to defend the principle that businesses should be properly considered when secondary legislation is created, so I urge Members to support the amendment.

Lords amendment 46, tabled by my good friend and Richmond Park predecessor Baroness Kramer, would introduce protections for whistleblowers. It follows her long-standing campaign for support for whistleblowers, and I pay tribute to her commitment to the cause.

[Sarah Olney]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The current framework for whistleblowing applies only if somebody has lost their job. It does not address the duty on businesses to follow up whistleblowers’ serious concerns about crimes. That urgently needs to be addressed.

Too many whistleblowers who raised serious concerns about matters ranging from fraud to patient safety are ignored by their employers, or are reticent to speak out because of fears of unfair repercussions. The new clause in Lords amendment 46 has received the support of numerous international civil society organisations, including Protect and Spotlight on Corruption. It would be a long-overdue update to our once world-leading whistleblowing legislation, and I urge colleagues from across the House to support the change.

I support Lords amendment 47, which would expand the right to be accompanied to employment hearings to include certified professional companions. Currently, employees may be accompanied only by certified trade union representatives, leaving many workers to navigate proceedings alone. Although trade unions provide valuable support to their members, only 22% of workers are in a trade union, including only 12% of private sector workers, with recent figures at a record low. The current provisions made sense at a time when trade union membership was higher nationally, but those provisions have become largely outdated as trade union membership has fallen and the labour market has modernised. Without the amendment, we consign many employees facing unfair dismissal to navigating the requirements of disciplinary hearings on their own, without any kind of professional or educated support.

[Dr Arthur]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the best protection against unfair dismissal is trade union membership?

[Sarah Olney]

No, I do not. I think that people should have the freedom not to join a trade union if that is what they wish, not least because their trade union contributions might go to a party that they do not vote for. Many professions these days are better represented not by trade unions that cover a whole range of different employment categories but by professional bodies. As an accountant, I was a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Had I been facing a disciplinary in relation to my professional duties, I would have been much better represented by a fellow member of that body than by a trade union.