New legislation published earlier this month will entitle employed parents who have suffered the death of a child under the age of 18 to two weeks’ paid leave.
The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill gives employed parents the right from the first day of employment to parental bereavement leave to allow them time to grieve. The leave has to be taken within 56 days of the date of the child’s death. In the event of the death of more than one child, the parent is entitled to leave in respect of each of them.
However, only employees (and not the broader category of ‘workers’) with a minimum of 26 weeks’ continuous service will be eligible to receive statutory parental bereavement pay. Small employers will be able to recover all of the pay from the government, while larger employers will be able to reclaim almost all of it.
Details of the proposed new law were published earlier this month in Parliament ahead of the bill’s second reading last week, with the ambition of it becoming law in 2020.
Currently under the Employment Rights Act, employees have a day-one right to take a “reasonable” amount of unpaid time off work to deal with an emergency such as a bereavement involving a dependant, including making arrangements following the death of a dependant.
What is “reasonable” depends on the circumstances but in practice the length of time off will be agreed between the employer and their employee. Employers do not have to pay an employee for this time away from work although many offer paid special or compassionate leave.
Iain Birrell of Thompsons Solicitors commented: “This is a welcome development in the law, as is the fact that there is the scope for it to also cover stillbirths. There are more than 3,600 stillbirths every year in the UK, and one in every 200 births ends in a stillbirth, making it 15 times more common than cot death. This detail, together with the rate of pay will be the subject of later regulations (assuming the bill clears a Brexit-clogged Parliament and becomes law).”
To read the bill, visit the Parliament website. Acas has also published good practice guidance for employers on managing bereavement in the workplace.