Work and Families Bill

I thank noble Lords for their contributions on the amendment. Everyone agrees that the concept of keeping in contact with the employer is very important. One must remember that at a time of great pressure on parents with new children, when they have left work, it is a challenge to return to it and it is sometimes daunting to do that and bring up children. The more contact that can take place between the parent and the employer so that returning to work is as smooth as possible must be in everyone’s interest. Equally, we must balance the needs of employers in terms of the way that they can administer and manage staff who are in that position. At all times, we are trying to seek a balance between the desirability of making it as easy as possible for the employee to come back in as flexible a way as possible for the needs of the business. As noble Lords said in the previous debate, by and large we have managed to create a consensus although there has been a little kerfuffle over direct payments. At all times we need to bear that in mind. Whether we can be even more flexible in the future will always be a question of how we can keep that consensus and evaluate each step to see what needs to be done. The Government have no problem at all with the general principle of the amendment. The noble Baroness will know that there was extensive consultation prior to the introduction of the Bill in another place. Quite a number of employers reported that they felt uncertain about whether they were permitted to initiate contact with employees. Although there is in fact no problem about employers initiating such contacts, the very fact that they may feel inhibited from doing so suggests that if we can, through legislation, encourage employer and employee to feel free to communicate openly during this time, we ought to do that. Alongside that, the Bill allows us to introduce ““keeping in touch”” days which will further support employers and employees in keeping in touch by allowing a woman to work a limited number of days for her employer during maternity leave. That is where we have got to. We will, as the amendment suggests, need to be clear about the meaning of ““reasonable contact””. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, was a mite critical that we had not simply gone ahead and done this as opposed to our approach of using regulations and concentrating on the guidance on reasonable contact. Our experience in the area of employment suggests that it is much better to get it right. Publishing draft regulations which allow for both keeping in touch days and reasonable contact, along with the guidance that will define what reasonable contact means, is probably the appropriate way to go. Although that means that these measures will be implemented later than the noble Baroness suggests, we are much more likely to get it right and to get the consensus we need. I hope that I have assured the noble Baroness that we very much agree with the points that all noble Lords have made this afternoon. Our approach in the draft regulations shows that we are dealing convincingly with this issue. I hope that the noble Baroness is satisfied with that response.