I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support. He asks a perfectly fair question that I will come to in a little more detail later on. In essence, the provisions for businesses will be the same as for other existing rights. There will be reimbursement of 103% for small businesses, and up to 93% percent for larger businesses. For those businesses who already follow good practice, there will be a benefit because they will be reimbursed for what they are already doing. At the same time, feedback from employers shows that they benefit because they have a better relationship with employees, and the return to work is much smoother and more successful. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question.
I will continue to describe the main provisions of the Bill. For parents who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests, the expectation is that neonatal pay will be paid during the leave at the statutory rate, which is just shy of £160, or 90% of the employee’s average wages—whichever is lower. Hopefully, that will be uprated in line with increases to statutory payments—something that we will monitor closely. That mirrors existing family leave and pay provisions such as paternity, shared parental and adoption and maternity after the first six weeks. The process for reimbursing employers will also mirror existing schemes.
There will be flexibility about when the leave is taken. The likelihood is that many fathers who have only two weeks of paternity leave will want to take their neonatal leave immediately thereafter, while their child is still in neonatal care. The situation for mothers is a little different, because once maternity leave commences, a mother cannot stop that maternity leave to take neonatal care
leave, otherwise she will lose her remaining maternity leave. Neonatal care leave is therefore to be flexible in order that mothers can add it to the end of their maternity leave and any other forms of parental leave they might be entitled to. With that in mind, the Bill provides for the window of time within which neonatal care leave can be taken to be set out in regulations. However, the window will be six to eight weeks following the child’s birth, which ensures that mothers and fathers have sufficient time to take their neonatal care leave alongside other leave rights that they might be entitled to, rather than losing out on any other such entitlements.
Finally, I want to explain the amendments that were made in Committee. First, clause 2 was amended to remove the power to amend primary legislation via secondary legislation—a so-called Henry VIII power. That was originally included to ensure that the Bill, on becoming law, worked effectively alongside other legislation that is going through Parliament. Upon further assessment and examination, it seems that this power is not required, and the clause now only empowers amendments to secondary legislation. Given that I spend an awful lot of my time as an Opposition MP shouting about excessive and inappropriate use of Henry VIII powers, it is pleasing to have been able to take at least one of them out of this Bill.
Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, part 2 of the schedule to the Bill was amended by changing the definition of “relevant week” in proposed new section 171ZZ16 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. The definition of “relevant week” is important because it fixes a point at which it is assessed whether a person is entitled to neonatal care pay. The Bill, on introduction, defined the relevant week as the one immediately prior to the week in which neonatal care started, which is similar to the drafting of equivalent provisions for parental bereavement pay. However, if a parent was already receiving statutory pay—for example, maternity pay—in the relevant week before their child enters neonatal care, their income could end up being lower than usual, negatively impacting their ability to qualify for neonatal care pay.
For those employees who are eligible for other parental pay entitlements such as maternity, paternity or adoption pay, the amendment made in Committee changes the definition of “relevant week” for neonatal care pay, to align it with the definition of “relevant week” in these existing entitlements. Amending the Bill in this way ensures that parents who are already low earners and perhaps only just above the earnings threshold do not miss out on the entitlement to statutory neonatal care pay simply because they are already receiving another type of family-related pay when their minimum earnings for neonatal care pay are assessed. Where an employee would not qualify for any of the other statutory parental pay, the relevant week will continue to be defined as the week immediately before the week in which neonatal care starts.