Work and Families Bill

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.