Parental Leave Bill (Hansard, 27 March 1987)

§ Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am pleased that, despite the long list of private Members' Bills on the Order Paper—some of them quite contentious— the House has reached the Second Reading of my Bill. I am also pleased to have the opportunity again to put to the House the case for parental leave. I advanced the detailed case under the ten minutes rule on 11 February, and, in view of the time, I shall not repeat all the details because I want particularly to hear the Minister's response. I hope that it will be positive, that he will recognise the enormous value of parental leave, and at least accept it in principle. After all, 10 of the 12 Common Market countries have some sort of parental leave provision.
The EEC issued a draft directive for member countries to bring parental leave into effect. Until now the Government have blocked the implementation of that draft directive in this country. Britain is virtually the odd man out in denying working fathers leave for child care. Working mothers would also be big gainers from these parental leave provisions.
The Bill's eligibility criteria by which people could receive parental leave entitlement would be met by the parent of a child under two years of age, the parent of a disabled child under five, and the parent of a child under five if the child has been adopted. Within a two-year period, the entitlement would be 13 weeks for each parent, if both are in full-time employment. That 13-week period would not be transferable; each parent would be entitled to 13 weeks. If that employee were a single parent the net entitlement would be 26 weeks. That provision is vital. I would also allow four weeks for an employed parent, if the other parent is not eligible—for example, if he or she is unemployed. The Bill would help part-time workers on a pro rata basis. It gives them the right to return to the same, or similar, work after an absence for child care. That provision is also important.
The benefits for individual working parents are enormous. I shall not repeat the list that I gave on 11 February, but I shall explain those benefits briefly. The Bill would improve equal opportunities for women in employment and it would help to overcome the damaging discontinuity of employment that is suffered by women after childbirth. I should like to give the House three facts about that. First, the average woman with two children spends seven years out of the labour force because there are no options for returning to work. Parental leave would give women that opportunity, and at least help in that respect. Secondly, it is estimated that a women loses about £135,000 during her working life because of loss of employment. Thirdly, Britain has one of the lowest employment rates for women with children. Our rate is much lower than the rates comparable countries.
Parental leave also helps the fairer distribution of responsibilities for child care between the parents and improves family and child welfare. That is vital. We are approaching a general election in which, I am sure, the family will be on the agenda. Parental leave helps the family. We all know of the increasing problems of child 731 abuse. Parental leave recognises the father's role in and responsibility for child care, and it would help fathers to fulfil those responsibilities by giving them rights.
I know that the Government have claimed that this parental leave scheme would hurt employers. However, that is not the case, because at the moment employers lose many of the skills that women bring to employment and which they could bring back to their place of work after child care. The cost of losing those skills which could otherwise he retained is not inconsiderable; in fact, a substantial amount of money is involved.
Furthermore, fewer than 700,000 babies are born in this country every year. Not all of the parents are employed. Therefore, they would not be eligible, or would not take up their rights. If one sets those 700,000 parents against the total working population, one realises that the eligibility level would be quite small.
In 1982, the Policy Studies Institute reported to the Government on the maternity leave provisions that were introduced by the Employment Protection Act 1975 and stated that there was remarkably little impact on employers relative to all the other influences upon them. It would be the same for family leave provision.
I understand that small businesses may have problems, but the Bill provides for the Treasury either to share the cost with the employer or to take it on for small businesses. The Common Market scheme costs between £31 million and £45 million. I admit that my Bill would cost more because it is better, but it would be well below 0 . 1 per cent. of our total wages and salaries bill. The cost would be well worth the advantages. Indeed, our competitors are introducing parental leave because they see those advantages.
Since I introduced the Bill there has been little publicity, but already there has been widespread support. Many local authorities and Civil Service unions support it. The Maternity Alliance, to which many organisations are affiliated, also supports and has been a principal backer of the Bill. Only recently the National Council for One Parent Families has sent a letter to many Members of Parliament urging them to support the Bill.
I understand that the Government may disagree with the details of the Bill, but I urge them to support Second Reading today and to sort out those details in Committee. Let us get on a par with other European countries and bring some of those benefits for working parents into operation. Whatever happens today, statutory parental leave will inevitably come to Britain. I urge the Government to let it take this first step today.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on introducing the Bill. I cannot commend it to the House, but he has raised a subject of importance and I am pleased to have this opportunity to give the Government's response to it.
I am a little surprised that so few Labour Members are present.

§ Mr. Brian Sedgemore (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)
Name them.

§ Mr. Hogg
I heard a voice below the Gangway, but I am not in the least bit disposed to name that hon. Gentleman.
732 The hon. Member for Leyton told the House that the measure had the warm-hearted support of trade unions and others. Obviously, no Labour Members are sponsored by the unions in question. As I look across the Chamber I ask myself where those sponsored hon. Members are to support the Bill that their unions are so keen to have on the statute book. I ask myself whether the unions in question are getting their money' worth. There are more Conservative Members present, so perhaps the unions would do well to consider whether they should sponsor some of us.
It is perhaps desirable to put the Bill in its proper context. The hon. Gentleman told us about the Bill's detail, so perhaps he will forgive me if I do not go through it clause by clause. Nevertheless, we need to know something about its genesis. The Bill is based on proposals originally contained in a draft European Community directive. It states that there will be at least three months' parental leave for each parent consequential on the birth or adoption of a child. It was contemplated that leave would normally be taken within the first two years of the child's life. But the draft directive made provision for special procedures to be laid down in the case of adopted or handicapped children. I think that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would agree that that is at least an understandable approach.
The draft directive was first published in 1983. There was then the kind of process of consultation and discussion with which the House is familiar. As a consequence, the draft directive was revised in 1984. Again, following that process, there was discussion within the European Community, but unfortunately it proved to be impossible to come to a unanimous conclusion. In Decemer 1985, there was a meeting of the Social Affairs Council. My right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General suggested that the proposal be considered by the Commission's new unit to assess the impact of new regulations on small and medium-sized businesses. My right hon. and learned Friend was manifestly right to direct the attention of the European Community to an important consideration—namely, the cost burden that a proposal of this kind imposes on small business. 1 shall refer in a moment to the detailed provisions.
The Labour party and the hon. Member for Leyton, who does his best, are somewhat cavalier about the interests and burdens of small business. The Labour party and the hon. Member for Leyton do not appear to grasp the financial and practical burdens that a proposal of this kind might impose on small businesses. Of course, that is a massive divide between the parties. Conservative Members place great emphasis on the generation of wealth.

§ Mr. Sedgemore
Profit before care.

§ Mr. Hogg
If the hon. Gentleman is not careful, I shall have a few words to say about him as well. He has never shown any desire to have regard to the special interests of small businesses.

§ Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North)
rose——

§ Mr. Hogg
I shall give way in a moment.
The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) will find that he will lose his seat, as he has done previously.

§ Mr. Gale
I share my hon. Friend's concern about the burden that such a scheme might place upon small 733 business. I also have sympathy for the principle involved. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sort of scheme that has been introduced in some countries on the continent, which are unfunded but give a right to leave as opposed to paid leave, might be worth considering?

§ Mr. Hogg
Such matters are for consideration by the Government. The Government's broad view on the matter is that such points should be negotiated between employers and employees. The fundamental difference between the attitude of the Government and of the Labour party on this matter is that the Labour party wishes to impose upon industry and small business——

§ Mr. Sedgemore
Decent standards.

§ Mr. Hogg
Let the hon. Gentleman consider what the consequences are. As there are only three Opposition Members in the Chamber, they can hardly be said to be here. The alliance is wholly absent, as it has been for the greater part of this and previous debates. The Labour party, which would put industry into a straitjacket—a rigid formula—believes that that will not have adverse consequences. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch laughs.

§ Mr. Sedgemore
The hon. Gentleman is a joke.

§ Mr. Hogg
I am glad that I am pleasing the hon. Gentleman. Let him look at the consequences of his action.

§ Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross)
rose—

§ Mr. Hogg
I shall give way to my hon. and learned Friend in a moment.
Let the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch look at the consequences of his action. We are dealing with small businesses.

§ Mr. Sedgemore
Slovenly country.

§ Mr. Hogg
The hon. Gentleman said, "Slovenly country." If his policies were given statutory expression, an enormous burden would be imposed upon those who are active in the creation of wealth and new jobs.

§ Mr. Fairbairn
I am disturbed by the terms of the Bill and I wonder whether my hon. Friend can help me. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) said that the Conservative party believes in profits before care. I thought that care was paid for out of profits. What is caring about a parent who decides, on the basis of the Bill, to neglect his two-year-old child for 39 weeks of the year and then to take a fully paid holiday for 13 weeks of the year to look after it?

§ Mr. Cohen
rose——

§ Mr. Hogg
As I should have expected, my hon. and learned Friend has made an extremely perceptive criticism of the Bill. He is wholly right. When criticism of that kind is taken into account, together with the resource implications—

§ Mr. Sedgemore
Only a mindless moron would put it that way.

§ Mr. Hogg
That is not a very constructive comment to make in a debate of this kind. That is why the Labour party is falling into disrepute. If all that the hon.
734 Gentleman can do is to refer to my hon. and learned Friend in those terms, it means that the Labour party is not doing either itself or the issue justice.

§ Mr. Cohen
rose——

§ Mr. Hogg
The hon. Member for Leyton has been popping up and down, so of course I shall let him intervene.

§ Mr. Cohen
A large part of the Minister's response has been devoted to the burdens that will be placed on small businesses. Does he agree that my Bill provides for the Treasury to lift the burden off small businesses, which would lead to care being given without small businesses being hurt?

§ Mr. Hogg
The hon. Gentleman blames me for concentrating on small businesses. I am concentrating on them for two reasons. First, they matter. Secondly, his hon. Friend below the Gangway, the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch, suggested that the Bill would not impose a burden on small businesses. If his hon. Friend below the Gangway had kept his mouth shut and concentrated on matters that are clearly important, I should not have spent so much time on that part of the Bill.

§ Mr. Fairbairn
Will my hon. Friend give way?

§ Mr. Hogg
Of course I shall give way to my hon. and learned Friend.

§ Mr. Fairbairn
If I am a moron, surely the Bill would make more sense if my parents were to be paid by their employers so that they could look after me for 52 weeks of the year. A remark of that kind, coming from the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch, who is one of the principal proctalgics in this place, seems to demonstrate that he cares for nothing— far less for reason.

§ Mr. Hogg
I agree entirely with my hon. and learned Friend, subject only to this caveat and proviso: that even my hon. and learned Friend's parents might recoil from the prospect of supporting him, or even entertaining him, for 52 weeks of the year.

§ Mr. Sedgemore
My father is dead.

§ Mr. Fairbairn
So is mine.

§ Mr. Hogg
Dear, oh dear. I am very sorry that we are hearing about all these domestic details. If the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch thinks that that was a constructive intervention, that is a matter for him, but I think that the rest of the House will form an adverse view of what he said.
We have to form a view about this issue. The Government are not opposed to parental leave, but we are opposed to imposing it on industry by methods that are bound to cause very substantial on-costs. We should like there to be consultation between employers and employees and we should like voluntary agreements to be entered into. To that extent I agree with the hon. Member for Leyton, but this Government will not impose substantial additional burdens on the small business sector. We attach great importance to the prosperity of that sector. The Bill would put that prosperity at substantial risk.

§ Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey and Waterside)
I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and I 735 congratualte the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on introducing it. In an earlier intervention from a sedentary position the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) shouted, "Name them", referring to those Opposition Members who are here to take part in the debate. We should put his name on the record for a start. We should also put on record the names of the hon. Members for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster), the Opposition Chief Whip, and for Battersea (Mr. Dubs), who was here earlier. However, those who sit on the Liberal and Social Democratic party Benches, as well as Members of the other parties, so-called, are noticeably absent, as usual.
In his reply to the speech of the hon. Member for Leyton, my hon. Friend the Minister emphasised the additional burden that he felt this measure would impose on small businesses.
I should like to draw attention to one branch of small business— agriculture— in which I must declare an interest as a farmer. I have some knowledge of the effects of what is proposed in the Bill. I employ approximately 15 people on my farm and, as a result of the enormous progress that British farming has made over the last 10 years in increasing its productivity, there are no laggards around. Everybody is doing a vital and important job, is full-time employed and working considerable overtime.