Work and Families Bill

My Lords, I reiterate the thanks expressed by your Lordships and add my own to the Minister for his clear introduction of the Bill. We have had a lively, albeit somewhat specialised debate, with welcome contributions from all sides of the House. It is clear that there is a general welcome for the aims behind the Bill, but concerns remain about the delivery of those aims and how they will work in practice, not least because, as my noble friend Lady Miller noted, much of what we are discussing is still in the form of draft regulations and, even more worrying, still to be drafted regulations. There are several areas that we wish to explore as the Bill goes through Committee stage and where we will be probing the Government on their thinking behind certain issues. As my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon explained in her opening speech, we have the pleasure of performing a double act on this Bill. My noble friend will, as she has more than ably demonstrated, address the DTI angle; and I will concentrate on the family issues. As such, I do not want to go over too much of what my noble friend has said, other than to emphasise the need for further debate surrounding the workings of the statutory maternity pay for small businesses, the complexities of additional paternity leave, which have been so forthrightly addressed by my noble friend Lady Knight of Collingtree, and the two clauses that obviously had no other home to go to—the detailed workings of annual leave in Clause 13 and the increase in redundancy pay in Clause 14. I will take this opportunity to raise a few overlapping and additional issues. The family is the crucial building block of a stable and prosperous society. Indeed, the lack of proper family structure is a sure path to poverty. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, have rightly said, those early months and years are critical to the physical and emotional development of our children. Perhaps this is the time for us on these Benches to congratulate David and Samantha Cameron on the birth today of their baby boy and to wish them some happy days together. We are now so much more aware of the need for proper attachment between babies and their mothers, so the extension of maternity leave in the Bill is enormously welcome. As we heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, the importance of fathers in the upbringing of their children is now widely recognised. Studies in an Equal Opportunities Commission report, Shared caring: bringing fathers into the frame, confirmed the importance of early paternal investment in caring. I was, therefore, particularly pleased to learn that almost 80 per cent of fathers are very positive about their employers’ attitudes regarding time off work following the birth of a baby. Even where less generous paternity leave provisions were available, fathers tended to regard their employers as sympathetic and helpful. But however sympathetic and helpful employers are, juggling a job and family responsibilities is still not easy. So it is hardly surprising that EOC polling shows that seven out of 10 people were concerned about what family life would be like for their children and grandchildren; and six out of 10 people were worried about spending enough time with their families. This concern is amplified when employees become carers. The whole issue of caring is near and dear to the hearts of many of us. My noble friend Lady Miller and I have had the privilege and the pleasure of looking after our mothers in our own homes. But not everyone can have their elderly relatives living with them and sometimes the person they are caring for is not related to them. I should think most of us taking part in this debate will have had the unenviable task of trying to fulfil their work commitments while looking after the best needs of those they love and care for. The request for flexible working has undoubtedly been a success. According to the 2005 CBI Employment Trends Survey, 90 per cent of requests are accommodated. This has resulted in savings for companies in recruitment and training, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, pointed out, and absence costs; and they reap the undeniable benefit of a happier and, I hope, more productive workforce. We have seen some innovative thinking from companies in this area. Just last month McDonalds launched a scheme called the Family Contract that allows employees to share their jobs with other members of their families. Anyone over the age of 16—that is, children, mothers, fathers, or grandparents—can share the job and swap shifts according to their family requirements. McDonalds is currently trialling this in six cities and if it proves to be successful it may consider extending it to friends and wider family members. Obviously it is a big company, operating in a sector which lends itself to that work practice. Such working practices certainly would not suit all companies and all employees, but it is an illustration of how business is often ahead of legislation. Many companies—the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, mentioned some of them—have voluntarily extended the right to request flexible working to all staff. If someone can make a business case that it will not impact on their work or those around them, they are more often than not granted their request. This has an added benefit in that it stops the feeling of resentment from employees who do not have the opportunity of flexible working and who feel they have to pick up the burden of their colleagues who do. Although we welcome the extension of flexible working to carers, we have some concerns. We share the unease of the Federation of Small Businesses that each change to the legislation adds another regulatory layer for small business to deal with. The FSB argues that small businesses are the original flexible employers. As the daughter of parents who ran a small cake shop and employed eight people—most of them my cousins, aunts and uncle, so perhaps we were ahead of McDonalds—I know from first hand experience how owners of small firms bend over backwards to accommodate their workforce. Indeed, it is often at the expense of their own work/life balance. The Conservative Party believes that increased rights for parents and carers often means increased burdens on other employees, so we want to engage in a wider debate on the implications and practicalities of extending the right to request to everyone and not just to carers. But, in the context of this Bill, we are talking only about carers, and the concern from many of the employers groups over extending flexible working comes about because the definition of a carer is not exactly clear. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the publication of the draft regulations at the end of last month. It is a great shame that they were not prepared in time for the debate in the other place, particularly as that is when they were promised. We hope that the remaining regulations will be produced before the Committee stage in this House but, in the mean time, we will study in detail those that have been produced and, in particular, will probe the Government on their thinking and on the limitations behind the definition of a carer. In our recent debates on the Adoption and Children Bill in this House, we paid tribute to all those who give time and effort to fostering or adopting, giving a child a second chance of a secure family life with all the advantages that that can bring. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in praising all that they do. So we very much appreciate the introduction of Clause 2 and the extension of the adoption pay period to 52 weeks. We also welcome Clause 4, which introduces the new statutory right to additional paternity leave for employees following the placement of a child for adoption. However, I share the concerns of BAAF—the British Association for Adoption and Fostering—regarding the newly developed concurrent planning schemes, which have been developed since adoption leave and pay were introduced. These fledgling schemes—I think there are about four at the moment—approve potential carers as both foster carers and adopters so that young children can be placed with them on an interim basis while their birth families complete an assessment to see whether it will be safe to allow the children to return to live with them. Where it is established that the children cannot return home, the placement with the foster carers is converted to an adoptive one with a following application for an adoption order. There are huge benefits for the children concerned. They are not passed from pillar to post and some order is brought into their fragile world. But there is a problem. Because the initial placement is on a fostering basis, if the case proceeds to adoption, the parents are not eligible for adoption leave or pay. All hope is that the practice of concurrence will grow. It would be a tragedy if the exceptional people that we need to participate in these schemes were deterred from doing so because they were not entitled to statutory pay and could not rely on their right to return to work. Ultimately, if these wonderful and selfless people do adopt, they will save the state an enormous amount of money in care costs. I hope that the Minister will look at this anomaly and give it serious consideration in the run-up to the Committee stage of the Bill. It is essential that we provide families, parents and carers with genuine choice and flexibility so that they can balance their family life and work commitments as best as they possibly can. But we also need to provide business with legislation that does not tie it up in acres of red tape and does not cost its competitive edge. In their 2005 manifesto, the Government claimed that they would regulate only where necessary and set exacting targets to decrease the costs of administrative regulations. They also stated:"““Government does not create wealth but must support the wealth creators””." Yet we debate this Bill today in the knowledge that the CBI is critical of the Government for having failed to meet their commitment to the better regulation agenda and for failing to provide a balanced package which is both family-friendly and business-supportive. As my right honourable friend Theresa May said from our Benches in the other place:"““There is no point in being family-friendly if we are not job-friendly””.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/12/05; col. 656.]" Without income, it is hard for any family to achieve any balance at all. The Bill touches on some very big issues, and throughout Committee we will work towards achieving a practical and reasonable balance. After all, this is, as the Government recognised in their consultation document, one way of ensuring that the next generation have the best possible start in life.