Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, first and foremost, I am sure all Members of your Lordships’ House will want to join me in offering our best wishes to the Members of Parliament for Fareham, Enfield North and Walthamstow. As we all now know, Suella Braverman, Feryal Clark and Stella Creasy are expecting babies in a few weeks’ time. Access to appropriate maternity leave is equally important for all three There has been a tendency for successive Governments to inflate the importance of Ministers at the expense of Parliament, and this Government are certainly not immune. But under our constitution, Ministers are accountable to MPs, who are themselves accountable to constituents—not all the other way around. It follows that it is vital for MPs and their constituents to be effectively reinforced for parental leave that they are encouraged to take It happens that the Member for Fareham is to be fully supported in her ministerial role, throughout the six months’ leave, by this Bill. What about her MP role? I am sure her constituency office staff would do an excellent job with her casework, and she would, presumably, be able to nominate a proxy to vote for her However, the electors of Fareham will be without a parliamentary voice for the period of leave, and that will also be true for the people of Enfield and Walthamstow. When I was shadow Leader of the House of Commons for the Liberal Democrats, I worked with Robin Cook and Sir George Young—now the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—to seek ways to strengthen the role of Members who did not seek ministerial advancement. That led, among other things, to improved status and influence for committee chairs But the Bill provides the Government an opportunity to drive a further wedge between the treatment of Ministers and MPs. That cannot continue indefinitely. As my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire pointed out, the gestation of this narrow Bill has been much longer than a pregnancy. It is disappointing that the opportunity to develop a much wider reform has not been taken. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, pointed out, with her memories of the inconceivable situation that arose in 1976, it is curious that this must be emergency legislation after decades of inadequate gestation There are other ways in which this ad personam Bill must clearly be followed by more comprehensive legislation, as my noble friends have been emphasising in this debate. There are serious inequalities to be addressed both inside Parliament and beyond. Better provision for all forms of parental leave has been a theme right through the debate. For all MPs would be a good start, but paternity, adoption, shared parental and child bereavement leave all need to be addressed urgently, not just for MPs but more widely. In that context, I was very moved by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, whose professional evidence we all take so seriously The MP’s life is exceptionally demanding. I knew that, but it has become even more so since I was a Member. My wife was expecting when I defended a tiny majority in October 1974, only to lose it by a few hundred votes. In retrospect, we both agreed that this was a blessing in disguise, when the first months of 1975 were dominated by the arrival of our new son, to join a very lively two-year-old daughter. I do not think that I would have been able to give good service to my constituents then. If the constituents of Fareham, Enfield and Walthamstow—and many others in future—are not to be discriminated against, the Bill is addressing only a relatively minor problem. Ministerial duties can be undertaken by others, with a huge back-up of civil servants, but not so parliamentary duties I have no doubt that the Minister will have at his fingertips comparable maternity allowance provision, not just as recommended for MPs’ staff but for all the employees of the two Houses of Parliament, to set beside what we are considering simply for Ministers and a few others. If he does not, I am sure that in his usual way he will have the courtesy to let us see something to compare before the further stages of the Bill. Meanwhile, as all my colleagues have urged, and other Members right across the House, if the Government mean what they say about the need for generous parental leave, then they cannot give up on the process to provide it throughout the country once the Bill is passed. I hope that it will be passed—but words are significant, especially in legislation and especially in this place. Of course the semantic concerns expressed on all sides are important, and I do not envy the Minister’s job in squaring the circle to achieve plain speaking and accessible language in the context of the Bill, as he has been asked to do. Personally, my bafflement is very simple: I do not really understand how "women" is legislatively unacceptable but "maternity" can be used throughout the Bill from its Title onwards. The dictionary definitions seem equally restrictive Above all, we note the promise from the Paymaster-General, Penny Mordaunt. In the Commons Second Reading, on 11 February, having acknowledged pressure from all parties for a more comprehensive nationwide approach to parental leave, with legislative proposals, she said: "I think we should be bringing this back to the House before the summer recess in order to address those other issues."—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/21; col. 559.] As the noble Baroness has just said, a lot of us are looking for that—and the Paymaster-General was referring to legislation, not just consultation. That sounds to me like an expectation of inclusion in an early summer Queen’s Speech. On behalf of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I ask the Minister to reiterate that promise. Our support for the Bill is not unconditional; we support it but we hope that it leads to the much greater, more comprehensive improvements to all parental leave which we are looking for. It would be totally unacceptable for Parliament to give special maternity entitlement to Ministers—and in Clause 4, to a small selection of Labour officeholders—without that firm commitment to make progress for wider parental leave to both MPs and the nation which they serve.