Work and Families Bill

I think that that survey, if it is accurate, was about interchangeable leave, which has now turned into additional paternity leave, and the idea that small businesses would have to police a system in which they had to know that the mother had returned to work before they could give authority for the father to take the additional paternity leave. That is why we have taken a power in the Bill to ensure that we are able to consult widely. We have ideas, which will probably emerge during this debate, about how to achieve that using a very light touch. The issues that small businesses mentioned to us included the rule that maternity leave and maternity pay start on different days and the complication that that produces. Small businesses asked why it could not all start on the same day and whether the rate could be a daily rate, rather than a weekly one. The latter would help with another issue that they raised, which was that if a woman was going to be away from the workplace for up to 12 months, there should an opportunity to bring her back in—for a day’s training, for example—with the agreement of both sides and without penalty. If that happens now, the woman loses a week’s maternity pay, just for coming back for a refresher day to get used to new technology. Those are practical considerations, as is small businesses’ request that a woman who returns from maternity leave before the end of that leave should have to give more than four weeks’ notice, which is all she has to give now. We have therefore doubled that requirement to eight weeks, because that is a legitimate and practical thing to do. In that and many other ways, we have shown that we are keen to help small businesses to deal with these matters.