Bereavement leave should be a day one right, and I am reasonably supportive of the hon. Gentleman’s idea, or at least of having an idea of how an employer should approach leave for employees who have worked for them for a very short period of time. I accept it is probably slightly different for people who have worked for their employer for a very short period of time, but I think we would all hope and expect an employer to behave reasonably, because clearly this is not something a parent will have planned. This is not a provision of which any parent wants to take advantage, far from it. I am sure every parent in the Chamber would hope they never have to take advantage of this provision. I am interested to hear the Minister’s response on how we set that limit.
Again, we do not want the ludicrous situation in which a person, for the sake of argument, has worked one day short of the limit—for example, the death happens at 11 o’clock at night and they would have been covered if it had happened at 1 o’clock in the morning. We do not want such a cliff edge. I will address another such issue in relation to other amendments.
I support the broad thrust of what the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) says, and it will be interesting to hear the Minister and perhaps the sponsor of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, outline how they feel it should work so we do not have cliff edges. The whole point of the Bill is to have a position that reflects the devastating impact on people.
I am conscious that I have been on this theme for a little while, so it is probably time to move on to the fourth theme of my amendments. I touched on cut-offs in my response to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, and I am also concerned about the cut-off created by a child’s 18th birthday. My amendments 6 and 24, and amendment 21 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member
for Mid Dorset and North Poole, would change the definition of a child so it refers not only to sons and daughters aged under 18.
I think we would all feel that losing a child is hard at any age. Sadly, in my own family, my grandmother Beryl lost her son Mike. Mike was 59 and, by that point, my grandmother was in her late 70s, but the impact on her was just as strong as it would have been had Mike been 12 and had she been 30. Of course, due to her age, she did not need to worry about time off work—she was already a pensioner—but the impact on her was just as significant. She had lost her son.
The law does not view a person aged over 18 as a child. The law rightly views them as an adult—they are able to make their own decisions and are able to participate in life—but the parent still views them as their child. Sadly, my grandmother outlived not only her son Mike but the two children of her second husband, Cyril, my maternal grandfather. Both my mother and my uncle died before my grandmother, both passing away in their 50s. The impact on my grandmother was quite profound. My mother was the last of the three to pass away, four years ago. My grandmother said, “Here’s me sat here at 85 with all the children”—as she viewed them—“gone.”
It makes logical sense that a child aged under 18 should clearly be covered by the Bill. That is unarguable, and it is absolutely right that the provisions also apply to stillbirths.