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From House of Commons Hansard 18th January 2005

2.45pm

Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con): The Bill would be the better for having new clause 3 added to it. I said earlier that it is essential that Bills such as this one command the respect of all who have to implement them. The Bill would command far more respect if it required that we review its operation after a year. We would thus be able to see what was really happening on the ground. So often, the House and the other place deliberate at length on what ought to be done, what laws passed, what regulation made and how different people ought to behave. We then discover afterwards that there were unintended consequences of the laws that we have passed.

I do not want the Bill to go wrong. I want it to succeed. If we have the assurance that the Secretary of State will come back in a year to tell us how an essential part of the Bill is progressing and how it is affecting businesses, employers, employees and the economy as a whole, we could have far more confidence in it.

Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): I sympathise with what the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) said. It is clear that she has been given a difficult brief by the men in green suits and pastiche ties who run her party, even if they are better, I suggest, than the grey men in grey suits who used to run it. They clearly need to be seen to be close to business, but the front page of today's Financial Times and new clause 2, which is not being taken today, rather give the game away.

The implication of what the hon. Lady said is that the Secretary of State and the Minister do not spend a considerable amount of their time talking to businesses and listening to what small businesses and employers have to say. That is, of course, absurd. The idea that they speak to business or small employer only once a year and that only once a year would they relay those people's views back to the House is absurd. This back-door sunset clause—for that is what the new clause is—attacks the paternity leave that we introduced for birth and adoption. It attacks, indirectly, additional statutory paternity pay for birth and adoption, and it attacks additional statutory maternity pay and the rates of pay and period of leave that we are introducing. The platitudes of the hon. Member for Epping Forest on the wonders of paternity pay and her statements that the Government have, of course, got their policy right in principle, are also absurd. There is no sincerity in them.

Mrs. Laing: Throughout the passage of the Bill, the hon. Gentleman has made it his business to misinterpret everything I say, to put words in my mouth and to make out that I am saying things that I am not saying. Every word he just said was nonsense. We support the Bill.
 
Mr. Khan: The proof of that can of course be found in two things, to deal with any assertion of misinterpretation. One, of course, is Hansard. The other is form. If we look at the form of the official Opposition, we see that new clause 3 was not present in Standing Committee. In addition, they have form on opposing paternity pay provision when it was first introduced back in late 2001. I shall give the hon. Lady the opportunity to intervene if she wants to say that her party and her leader did not vote against the introduction of paternity pay in late 2001. I note her silence.

Mark Tami : The Opposition claim to support this measure, so why have they tabled a new clause that would make it appear to employers that it was a temporary measure that would last only a year?

Mr. Khan: My hon. Friend spots the elephant trap that the Opposition wish us to fall into. As for the Trojan horse of the sunset clause, I suspect that a focus group held over the weekend told them that it was a good idea. However, I shall not dwell on the reasons behind the tabling of new clause 3. Without the new clause, the Bill will not lead to a doomsday scenario, as the Opposition have predicted, because we have introduced other family-friendly measures. New clause 3 would remove certainty and clarity for families who wish to plan when to have their children and for businesses and employers who wish to employ workers from the widest—

4.25pm

Mr. Khan: It is a real pleasure to speak on Third Reading to a united Chamber. There was, in fact, a broadly united Standing Committee, too. Some on the Opposition Benches would, given the new leadership of the Conservative party, like to forget the recent past, and particularly their voting record. The Bill needs to be considered in the context of a journey that began in 1997. Although the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) was right to say that most good employment practices are not rocket science, the reality is that for those employers who do not get there by themselves, we need prescription in the law. Secondly, the law and regulations help to change attitudes so that employers, parents and carers change over time.
 
It gives me great pleasure to welcome the main thrust of the Work and Families Bill, which will extend paid maternity and adoption leave. It will also extend the right to request flexible working to carers of adults. It will help fathers to play a role in their child's upbringing if the mother returns to work. It will also make things easier for employers—a point often forgotten in Report stage debates. It will make it easier for employers to manage the administration of rights. The Bill will also include powers to deliver and ensure that all workers are entitled to four weeks of statutory leave in addition to the eight days for bank holidays.

It is a great pleasure to welcome the Bill, but it is worth emphasising that it is part of a jigsaw. Other parts of that are the work we have done on tax credits and child tax credits—helping hard-working families and those who are least well off. Other parts of the jigsaw are the work we have done to extend maternity leave to 26 weeks, not just benefiting mothers and families, but benefiting employers by facilitating more continuity and less staff turnover, with mothers given longer maternity leave.

We introduced two weeks' paternity leave. Other pieces of the family-friendly jigsaw are the introduction of three months' adoption leave. We must not forget the right to request flexible working, which has benefited 1 million parents across the country and many hundreds in Tooting. We also, of course, in another piece of the jigsaw, increased maternity pay, which was as low as £55 in 1997. Part-time workers now have the same rights as full-time workers, particularly benefiting women and ethnic minority employees, who were disproportionately part-time workers. Other pieces of the jigsaw are the introduction of four weeks of paid leave, which will include the eight pubic holidays. Finally, another piece of the jigsaw is the introduction of the national minimum wage—

I was coming to the point that the Bill, as part of that jigsaw, is different from other pieces of legislation in at least one respect: it has the support of Her Majesty's official Opposition. I do not mean to be churlish in acknowledging that U-turn, which is welcome.

I must emphasise what the Bill does to improve the quality of life for families in Tooting and around the country. Increased notice periods benefit both employers and employees, clarifying in law the fact that reasonable contact during maternity leave is permitted, allowing optional "keep in touch" days and enabling women to go to work for a few days during the paternity pay period. That will help employers to run maternity leave more effectively and will improve communication and contact during leave periods. The Bill will also enable statutory maternity pay to be paid daily and start on any day, which will ease the administration of SMP and allow employers to align the payment of SMP with their normal payroll arrangements.

Some of my hon. Friends and Liberal Democrat Members have mentioned the extension of the right to request flexible working to carers. It is important to reassure business that the costs of that will not be disproportionate. The majority of the cost of the measures in the Bill will fall to Government, because the Treasury will reimburse business for any maternity and paternity pay, at the rate of 92 per cent. for large businesses and 104 per cent. for smaller businesses. It is often forgotten that the net cost to business is estimated to be much smaller—£40 million to £90 million in any one year—and much of it is offset by the benefits that accrue, such as lower recruitment costs because more mothers return to work. As has been mentioned, more flexible working practices also lead to more productivity and profit, estimated at 3 per cent. of GDP.

The fact that groups as disparate as the Federation of Small Businesses, the TUC, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Maternity Alliance, Carers UK and even, dare I say, the Conservative party welcome the Bill is to be commended. The fact that the Bill will pass unopposed shows how far society has moved in recent years. As a Labour Member, I am especially proud that the movement towards a more family-friendly society and a healthier balance between work and family life began in earnest in May 1997.

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