Recommendation 8

HM Government Accepted in Part

The Government understands, and is sympathetic to, the challenges that parents of children of all ages have faced during the Covid-19 pandemic. Parents play a hugely valuable role in society, carrying out the important and often demanding job of raising the next generation. We have heard that the Covid-19 lockdown period has had a significant impact on parents’ ability to ‘socialise’ their babies; whether through visits to family and friends or attendance at parent and baby groups. Whilst this was clearly regrettable, the lockdown period was necessary to protect our NHS and save lives, including those of parents and their children. We are pleased that, as a result of the interventions that the Government made, the incidence of Covid-19 infections has come down significantly and we have been able to relax many of the social distancing measures that we had put in place. These relaxations have meant that nurseries and other early years facilities have been able to open since June. Most parents are also now able to meet with extended family members and friends, subject to observing the continuing advice on social distancing. The Government has taken unprecedented steps to support as many people as possible through this period including through: • the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), • the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEIS), and • the Job Retention Bonus (JRB) for employers who retain staff until January 2021. These schemes have helped to keep people in work and helped to ensure parents have jobs to return to following their parental leave. As of 16 August, 9.6 million jobs had benefited from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and employers have claimed more than £35 billion in financial support. This has enabled them to continue to trade and keep people in employment. In addition, nearly 3 million claims have been made under the first tranche of the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme by self-employed workers, worth £7.8 billion. There have been almost 300,000 claims made, worth almost £800 million, under the second tranche of the scheme which opened on 17 August. 10 The impact of Covid-19 on maternity and parental leave: Government Response We also enabled employers to furlough parents who were unable to work due to the closure of schools, nurseries, and childcare services—including individuals who were due to return to work at the end of their statutory parental leave. Whilst the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is now closed to new joiners (individuals who have not previously been furloughed) we have made an exception for individuals who have not previously been furloughed because they were on statutory parental leave. This means that new parents who were due to return to work after 10th June 2020 can still be furloughed, providing that their employer has already used the furlough scheme to furlough other employees in their organisation. In addition, we have laid legislation which ensures that expectant mothers are not financially disadvantaged when they start their Maternity Leave as a result of being furloughed in the period that determines eligibility for Statutory Maternity Pay and the amount of pay that the mother will receive. The same principle applies to new fathers and adopters and the legislation that we brought into force makes corresponding changes to other statutory parental pay schemes. We have also given homeowners mortgage holidays to help them and their tenants, and we have also made multiple adaptations to the benefit system to further support those recently made unemployed, and to support families and individuals who need help covering their basic living costs during this period of emergency. The Government already makes a significant investment in supporting parents to take time off work in the first year and in supporting them to combine work with childcare. This expenditure includes: • around £2.5 billion a year on maternity payments (Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance); • £49 million on paternity payments; • £22 million on adoption payments, • £13 million on shared parental payments; and • almost £6bn on childcare in 19/20, including approximately £3.6bn on the Department for Education’s free childcare offer. The cost to the Exchequer of this support for parents runs to billions of pounds, which is ultimately funded by the taxpayer. The Committee’s analysis estimates that the cost of extending paid parental leave for 3 months would run to the high hundreds of millions. Providing additional weeks of statutory parental pay would also have a financial impact on employers who not only have to cover absence costs related to their employee being off work but also have to fund 8% of the cost of statutory parental pay themselves (excluding small employers). These would be additional burdens on business at a time when many organisations are struggling to save their business and jobs. In the circumstances, we are not minded to extend entitlements to parental leave