A proposal to entitle parents to paid neonatal care leave has cleared its first parliamentary hurdle with cross-party support.
SNP MP Stuart McDonald, who put forward the proposal in a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons, said it would “give parents the emotional and financial support needed at a time of great stress and trauma”.
At its second reading, the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill received Government support following a previous commitment, and is now on course to become law, although a number of stages of parliamentary scrutiny remain.
Neonatal units care for babies born prematurely, with medical complications, or with a low birth weight.
MPs told the Commons of their own experiences, with fellow SNP MP David Linden saying he will remember until his “dying day” watching his daughter turn blue in an incubator and neonatal nurses rushing to resuscitate her.
“The idea that we as legislators would expect our constituents to be at work when that happens or, worse, they will go and do a shift after that, it really is I think something that we are putting right today because that is a historic wrong,” the MP for Glasgow East said.
Mr McDonald, the MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, said: “We will never be able to get rid of the stress, the anxiety, the doubts, the questions and indeed the trauma that so many families experience when their baby is in neonatal care.
“But what we can and must do is help to relieve some of the practical and financial challenges that accompany that experience.”
He cited estimates that 100,000 babies are admitted to neonatal care every year across the UK, and said making the change would make “a big difference to tens of thousands of families every year”.
“This Bill will allow parents to have protected time off work to care for their children in such a difficult time,” he said, adding@: “It’s intended that eligible parents will be able to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave on top of their other parental entitlements.”
He said that, as currently drafted, the entitlements in Bill would start to take effect after a baby has been in a neonatal unit for seven full days.
Conservative MP Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) spoke about his own experience of having a child in neonatal care, and said it takes a “huge mental toll” on parents.
Such was the cross-party support that Deputy Commons Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing said she did not think it would compromise her “usual impartiality” to praise the “excellent Bill”.
“Having myself given birth to a premature baby one week after a general election, and in the middle of a Conservative leadership election, I can understand some of the stresses and strains,” she said.
Parents shouldn't have to be at work, shouldn't have to be worrying at work when their child is in that situation— Labour MP Kerry McCarthy
Labour frontbencher Kerry McCarthy said her party supports the Bill, adding: “Parents shouldn’t have to be at work, shouldn’t have to be worrying at work when their child is in that situation.”
But she said it is “disappointing”, given the idea was a Conservative manifesto commitment, “that we’re having to rely on a Private Member’s Bill to get it to this stage”.
Business minister Jane Hunt said the Government would support the Bill, adding: “The United Kingdom has a range of generous entitlements and protections designed to support parents to balance their family and work commitments and maintain their place in the labour market whilst raising their children.
“However, for parents in the worrying position of having their newborn admitted to neonatal care it is clear that the current legal and pay entitlements do not provide adequate support.”
She added that the entitlements should be a “floor, not a ceiling”.
