Paternity Leave Bereavement Act

Paternity Leave Bereavement Act Will Include Parents of Babies, Adoption of Children and Surrogacy Arrangements

The Paternity Leave (Bereavement) Act was rushed through parliament in the final hours before the election campaign started. The Act will give new rights to leave and pay to bereaved fathers and partners who lose the child’s mother during or shortly after childbirth. Bereaved parents of adopted children and children born through a surrogacy arrangement will also be covered.

Why Was The Paternity Leave (Bereavement) Act Proposed?

Originally, the Bill proposed that bereaved fathers or other working partners receive immediate access to Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and pay from the first day of employment, i.e. leave and pay would be “day-one” rights. This was to eliminate the current requirements of 26 weeks of employment and three months’ notice. The Bill was aimed at providing immediate support to fathers or partners who lose the child’s mother during or shortly after childbirth, ensuring they are not disadvantaged by the existing continuous employment criteria. We published an article on the Bill last month which can be found here. On 20 March 2024, the Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Bereavement) Bill was substantially amended at the committee stage and even renamed to the Paternity Leave Bereavement Bill.

What Rights Do Qualifying Employees Benefit From?

The Act will:

• Scrap the minimum service requirement for bereaved partners in cases where the mother of a newborn child has died. Bereaved parents of adopted children and children born through a surrogacy arrangement will also be covered. This means that paternity leave will become a ‘day one’ right for bereaved partners.
• Remove the condition preventing bereaved partners who have already taken shared parental leave from taking paternity leave.
• Ensure that where both the mother and child die, bereaved partners will still be able to take leave, despite the fact that leave cannot be taken to care for the child or support the mother.
• Allow for regulations which permit a bereaved partner to take ‘keeping-in-touch days’ – commonly known as KIT days – without bringing their period of leave to an end. The Act has also kept open the possibility for regulations regarding the potential redundancy of a bereaved employee after they return to work.

Although the primary focus of the Act is making paternity leave a ‘day one’ right for bereaved partners, there is also a plan to increase paternity leave for bereaved partners from two weeks to 52 weeks, according to the Labour MP who sponsored it. The Act itself does not include this increase, but the intention appears to be for this to happen through additional regulations.

Before any of the new paternity leave rights under the Act can come into force, further regulations need to be made. In practice, this means that the Act will need to be implemented by the new government after the election.

The law on statutory paternity leave and pay changed on 6 April 2024 as a result of the Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024 coming into effect earlier in March 2024.

Read more …

Employee Handbook Compliance Package

Get the Latest Legislation News and My Top Tips delivered straight to your inbox

Let Me Buy You A Coffee!

If you found this helpful and you would like to learn more about how I work with owners of small business who want to improve their HR management, please go here.

Tap into and share the Kea world!

Don't forget to add Kea to your social networks and when you read an article that you like share it with your network!