Part-Time Workers (Maternity Rights) (Hansard, 8 May 1996)

§ Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to extend maternity rights to part-time workers; and for connected purposes. I am pleased to have the opportunity to present the Bill, as I wish to make some very important points. The Bill proposes a simple change in the law regarding maternity allowance. It seeks to abolish the present provision whereby women on the lowest incomes are excluded from statutory maternity allowances. It does that by removing the earnings threshold that limits maternity allowance to those who earn enough to pay national insurance contributions. The present law discriminates against those on the lowest rates of pay and those who work part-time. It perpetuates the idea that the poor and part-timers do not deserve proper rights at work, and it is a shameful anomaly, which should be swept away.

There are few rights more important than the right to maternity pay, which helps parents to ensure that their babies have a good start in life. Few people need to be included in the maternity allowance system more than those mothers who are on the lowest incomes. That fact was recognised by the Education and Employment Committee in its report entitled "Mothers in Employment", which was published in February last year.

Paragraph 36 of the report contains one of the Committee's main conclusions, after considering a great deal of evidence: The provision of statutory maternity pay is fundamental to enabling women with dependent children to work. Some of the poorest women with children, who most need to be included in the system of maternity pay, are currently excluded. We recommend that the Government extend rights proportionately to women below the National Insurance threshold. As one would expect, the Government dealt with that recommendation very briefly in their official reply, which they published in May 1995. They said: It has been the practice of all Governments to base eligibility for Statutory Maternity Pay (SNP) and Maternity Allowance (MA) on the requirement to pay national insurance contributions, which is only fair to the taxpayer who meets most of the cost of these benefits. The Government believes that it is wrong for a person to draw on such benefits when they have paid insufficient tax and national insurance contributions. A universal right to maternity pay would be prohibitively expensive and poorly targeted. Women with no other income can claim help from the income support scheme". A reasonable estimate of the cost is approximately £50 million, which would benefit at least 120,000 women in the United Kingdom each year. The Government response ignores the reason why there is a threshold for employees' national insurance contributions: the law recognises that people below that threshold are least able to pay those contributions. Such people are not evading paying taxes they should pay, or employing accountants and tax consultants to help them find ways of avoiding taxes. These are people whose incomes are considered too low for them to pay such constributions. Since these are the women with the lowest incomes, they are likely to be those who most require maternity pay, yet the law as it stands denies it to them.

The Government say that, if those women have no other source of income, they can always claim help from the income support scheme. That applies to anyone receiving 240 maternity pay, but the Government choose to direct that argument only at the poorest. In fact, it could be used as an argument for abolishing all maternity pay, and even for abolishing all benefits other than income support. That would be an absurd way of approaching the issue, and the Government should come up with a more responsible and sensitive reply.

High on anyone's list of such people must be mothers on low incomes with new-born babies. One would imagine that they might even be high on this Government's list. There is more at stake than the instinct of some Conservative Members to deny rights to the poor; there is the much more widespread prejudice which underlies discrimination against part-timers.

Part-time employees are still widely regarded as not having "real jobs". Even relatively enlightened employers often set up schemes whereby part-timers are referred to as "job-sharing", two people have half each of a fictitious full-time job, as if the only proper jobs were full-time jobs. Part-timers face discrimination in many different ways at the hands of employers who fail adequately to value the hard work done by most part-time employees.

Discrimination takes many different forms. Employers often do not bother to include part-timers in their pension schemes, they may lose out on staff discounts and other benefits available to full-timers, and they are often excluded from training schemes or from being allowed to attend training in work time. The interests of part-timers are frequently ignored when arrangements are made for meetings, and they are usually discriminated against in career promotion. All those forms of discrimination by employers should be made illegal.

On top of all that discrimination by employers, there are further forms of discrimination operated by the Government and the law. The law ought to be on the side of part-timers, not against them, but it is against them today in many ways. My Bill seeks to put right one of those injustices—discrimination in maternity allowances.

As I have said, that is a form of discrimination against part-timers, because, in order to qualify for the threshold income above which one can obtain maternity pay, the lower the number of hours worked each week, the higher the rate of pay has to be. It is hard to think of a system more perfectly designed to discriminate against part-timers. The only exception is part-timers who are on the highest professional rates of pay. Those are the only part-timers against whom the Government do not wish to discriminate.

I have referred to the report of the Select Committee on Education and Employment, which recommended the change in the law that I am introducing in my Bill. One of the organisations that gave evidence to the Committee was the Equal Opportunities Commission. It said: We know from research we have commissioned, and from our postbag, that women's patterns of work around childbirth are greatly influenced by financial considerations. If there is no income replacement, or if the level is too low, women may come under pressure to return to work at too early a stage after childbirth. One objective of the establishment of a Statutory Maternity Pay Scheme was to encourage women not to endanger their own or their babies' health by working too late into their pregnancies, or by returning too soon after their babies are born. A total of 20 per cent. of pregnant working women earn less than the lower earnings limit for national insurance contributions. By any standard, a total of 20 per cent. 241 involves discrimination against many women at a time of great pressure for them, and it also involves many children.

Insisting on applying the contributory principle to those on the lowest earnings is a heartless and insensitive response to a clear case of injustice. There is a clear need for society, through the law, to intervene. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will recognise the strength of the case made last year by the Select Committee, which I have today put in the form of an amendment to the law in my Bill.

I have the backing of the Trades Union Congress for the Bill, and I am grateful for its assistance in the Bill's preparation. I am pleased to say that the Bill draws on wide cross-party support, which itself underlines the urgent need for legislation. I commend the Bill to the House.