Parents in Britain will be granted a right to bereavement leave after suffering a miscarriage as part of Labour’s workers’ rights reforms, the Guardian can disclose.
In a change to the law made via the employment rights bill, mothers and their partners will be given the right to two weeks of bereavement leave if they have suffered a pregnancy loss before 24 weeks’ gestation.
The bill, which will implement Labour’s flagship workers’ rights reforms in England, Wales and Scotland, is set to pass its final Commons hurdles next week.
Parents already have a right to bereavement leave in cases where they have lost a child or suffered a stillbirth after 24 weeks of gestation.
The decision to extend this right to couples who suffer a miscarriage before 24 weeks marks a victory for the Labour MP Sarah Owen, who has campaigned for the change. The women and equalities select committee, which Owen chairs, concluded in a report in January that the case for it was “overwhelming”.
Although a growing number of employers already offer the leave as a discretionary extra benefit, the committee said this should become a universal right given the far-reaching physical and emotional impacts of baby loss.
About 250,000 expectant mothers in the UK suffer a miscarriage every year. Between 10% and 20% of pregnancies end in an early miscarriage within 12 weeks of gestation.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has spoken of his own family’s experience of pregnancy loss. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain in January he was “sympathetic” to the campaign, saying: “I know how important it is. Like a lot of people I’ve had some experience of this myself, it’s very, very difficult.”
The bill already gives the right to bereavement leave to parents whose partner has died in childbirth but whose baby survives.
The Guardian understands the government will also strengthen ways for trade unions to access workplaces, according to sources briefed on amendments to the bill.
It will mean a fast-track decision-making route and off-the-shelf access agreements – and tough fines for employers who ignore those regulations. Unions will be given the right to have digital access to employees, such as through work intranets. Unions had hoped this would help them better access gig-economy workers.
Another amendment will ban employers from flooding the bargaining unit which can unfairly influence the recognition ballot process. The trade union GMB had argued that when it made its first application with Amazon, only 1,400 people were working at the warehouse and 750 signed up. But the union claimed the fulfilment centre then added another 1,400 workers on temporary contracts.
Reynolds will respond to a number of consultations relating to the bill on Tuesday, including over implementing the ban on zero-hours contracts, the ban on fire-and-rehire practices, trade union rights and statutory sick pay.
Other key aspects of the legislation, such as a new statutory maximum period of probation which will allow for “lighter touch” dismissal for employees, are yet to be consulted on.
Businesses had lobbied for longer probation periods to allow them to dismiss poor employees as a concession to the introduction of day-one protection against unfair dismissal, such as those related to sex or race discrimination. At present, an employee has to be in post for two years in order to claim unfair dismissal through an employment tribunal, but the bill will introduce this right from day one.
Keir Starmer criticised Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party over their opposition to the bill last month. He told the Scottish Labour conference: “They talk the language of workers’ rights online and on the doorstep … but they voted against banning fire-and-rehire. They voted against scrapping exploitative zero-hours contracts.”
