Work and Families Bill

I see what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I would say that we need not so much a level playing field as to try to make all employers do what good ones already do. We had an excellent debate in Committee on paternity leave, and I am sorry to see so few members of the Committee here, although there are some—notably the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker). Examples were given of times when men had found an excuse to be absent from work on the day that their child was born, or the day after, or the day after that. They would give any excuse other than what might be construed as the soppy excuse that their wife was having a baby and they would leave work that afternoon. When I say ““soppy””, incidentally, I do not mean that I think it a soppy excuse; indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am not sure whether soppy is parliamentary language, and I apologise unreservedly if it is not. The point is that we all know the way in which men sometimes talk to other men, and it is often the case that there is not always universal sympathy for a man who thinks that his place on the day on which his child is born is beside his wife and child. There are people who think that he should be anywhere else in the world. It is generally agreed, however, that a man should, of course, have the right to paternity leave. It is far better that employers and employees are given the opportunity to be honest about this matter. Examples were given in Committee of where expectant fathers would give all sorts of excuses for not being at work when they were in fact attending the birth of their child. The really good thing about the Bill is that it encourages, and indeed enables, employers, and employees, to be honest. If a man wishes to be present at the birth of his child and be with his wife and child the following day and for a little while thereafter, he should be able to be honest about it, and a good employer, as the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, will recognise that he will get more out of his employee if he is flexible about giving leave. That is what is good about the Bill. What is not good is that we do not know what the effect will be on small businesses, and therefore on the economy as a whole. That is why we tabled new clause 3, requiring the Secretary of State to review and report on the effect of clauses 3 to 10 during every year in which the regulations are in force, beginning 12 months after they are made. That, of course, could be just over a year from now, and the Minister might be able to tell us what we all suspect, which is that £400,000 is not anything like the real cost to business of administering the new rights in the Bill. I hope that the Bill will pass today, but I hope that the Minister will tell us in 12 months’ time that the regulations are working smoothly and well, that employers have adjusted very well to the way in which paternity leave is being sought and given and paternity pay paid. I hope that he will be able to tell us that the administrative problems are few. I hope he will be able to say that, but we do not know. 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.