Work and Families Bill

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman) about flexible working for parents of teenage children, as the father of two teenagers I am acutely aware of the pressures of being a parent of children of that age. There is a strong case to extend the right to that group of parents, as well as to carers, at some stage. I hope that the Government will consider the timing of introducing that. It is a pleasure to return to some of the issues that we debated back in 2002, on the Employment Bill, when the Secretary of State was not in his current elevated position. It is fair to say that the introduction in that Bill, now the Employment Act 2002, of the right to flexible working has been a real success. That is because it has a light-touch approach, it does not impose too heavy a burden on employers and it has helped to change the culture of the workplace. That is a good thing. The Liberal Democrats broadly support the Bill. We have questions about a number of aspects of it, and we believe that further measures can be taken to lighten the administrative burden, simplify procedures and simplify the law, which remains complex in this area. However, we broadly support the package of measures and will vote for it at this stage should there be a Division. Although there are reservations among the wide group of interested organisations, to which the Conservative spokesman referred earlier, it is none the less interesting that, with reservations, the CBI, the Equal Opportunities Commission, Citizens Advice and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development have all broadly welcomed large aspects of the Bill. That is a good thing. Why is the Bill important? It is important because getting the balance right between work and family is critical. We would all recognise that the pressures on families have grown considerably. There has been a revolution in the workplace since the days when there was a sole male breadwinner and the mother was at home looking after the children. Now, more than ever, both parents work, which can mean insufficient time to look after and care for children. It is therefore in all our interests to do more to get the balance right. If the Bill helps in that direction, that is a good thing. For children who need time with parents and for the increasing number of people who are now cared for at home rather than in institutions—disabled adults, elderly people and so on—the Bill is of great importance. It is also of importance in terms of maintaining the sanity of those parents and carers and trying to balance the pressures of work and caring, whether for a small child or an adult loved one. It seems to me entirely legitimate for the state to be concerned about setting the right legal framework to balance all those competing interests. It is also important, as the Conservative spokesman rightly pointed out, to ensure that we balance the interests of employers in this area. Broadly, the step-by-step, light-touch approach is the right one. The right to request is the obvious example of how that applies, and it seems to me that trying to get employer and employee to discuss and reach agreement about flexible working is much better than the approach taken from the working time directive of seeking to impose an absolute limit on working hours, which the Government rejected, and on which I supported them. There are some questions around trying to lighten the burden on employers. Is enough being done to limit the bureaucratic burden, particularly for small employers? In terms of the cost and the time taken to recruit replacements for those who go on maternity leave, the burden is considerable. As the Conservative spokesman suggested, more consideration should be given to the right to opt for a transfer of administration of the payment of maternity and paternity pay to the state, particularly for small employers. I was interested in the exchange about the costs of the private sector doing that as opposed to the state. More analysis needs to be done, and I am not entirely convinced that, as one other speaker suggested, the time cost to smaller employers is analysed sufficiently. I know what it is like for someone employing two or three people to have to cope, in terms of time, with the administration of those payments. Is the analysis to which the Secretary of State referred sufficiently robust in identifying what those costs really are to small businesses?