Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015

Executive Committee Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 11:00 am on 12 May 2015.

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Photo of John Dallat John Dallat Social Democratic and Labour Party 11:00, 12 May 2015

The Business Committee has agreed to group these two motions into one debate. Following the debate, I will put the question on the first motion. I will then ask the Minister to move the second motion and to put the Question on it without further debate.

Photo of Stephen Farry Stephen Farry Alliance

I beg to move

That the Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 be approved.

The following motion stood in the Order Paper:

That the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 be approved. — [Dr Farry (The Minister for Employment and Learning).]

Photo of Stephen Farry Stephen Farry Alliance

I will address this and the subsequent regulation.

I seek the Assembly’s approval of the Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, which are subject to the confirmatory procedure as laid down in the parent legislation, the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. They were made on 2 March 2015 and came into operation on 15 March 2015. The regulations need to be considered as part of a larger set of 24 associated statutory rules that together provide for significant enhancements to current employment rights for new working parents. The enhanced provisions have been made possible by the Work and Families Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which received Royal Assent in January of this year. I believe that it will be helpful if I provide Members with a brief reminder of the background and context to the changes associated with the Act. This will be relevant to the consideration of all 11 regulations that I will bring before the Assembly today.

To many Members the detail will, of course, be familiar, given the relatively recent passage of the Act. Related sets of regulations have been grouped in order to assist Members. Members should note that the remaining statutory rules forming part of the overall legislative package brought forward by my Department are subject either to the negative procedure or, in the case of the order commencing the provisions of the Act, to no Assembly procedure. A further two statutory rules have been made by the Department for Social Development, and I thank that Department for its assistance in introducing this ambitious package of new rights for working families.

By way of brief background, the policy to which the regulations give effect was the subject of full public consultation in 2013. At the time, my Department asked for views on whether it would be appropriate to extend to Northern Ireland the system of shared parental leave and pay that was then proposed in Great Britain. The consultation also asked whether alternative options would be appropriate and sought views on the extension to all employees with 26 weeks’ service of the right to request flexible working. In addition to dealing with those broad policy questions, the consultation invited specific input on the administration of any new system. The 28 substantive responses to the consultation showed substantial support for extending shared parental leave and pay to Northern Ireland and for broader entitlement to request flexible working. It was on that basis that I introduced the Work and Families Bill in April last year and, with Members’ support, secured Royal Assent to the resulting Act of the Assembly in January.

It subsequently fell to officials to prepare and make operational the associated regulations to enable working parents in Northern Ireland to access the new entitlements from April of this year. The legislative package, taken as a whole, enables eligible working parents to share leave and pay entitlement in respect of children due to be born or placed for adoption on or after 5 April. Parents are now able to share leave in a way that was not possible before.

The system is flexible in that it permits both parents to return to work for periods during their leave, taking time off in separate blocks. It also allows parents to be off work alternately or at that same time, depending on the needs of the family.

In introducing these rights, I have been conscious that we need a system that enables employers to balance the needs of their business with those of the parents working for them. The measures therefore include requirements about what must be included in a leave request; they set defined notice periods; they cap the number of employee notifications for leave; and they allow employers to refuse requests for multiple separate periods of leave — that is to say, periods of leave broken up by time back at work. Much of the operational detail of shared parental leave and pay is set out in this first set of regulations, which are the subject of this motion.

The Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, which I will refer to in short as the "leave regulations", in association with the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 — the "pay regulations" — provide the main entitlements for a mother, or adopter, and a child’s father, or adoptive parent, or a mother's or adopter’s partner, to take shared parental leave and pay. The rights to shared parental leave and statutory shared parental pay are now statutory rights for employees with a partner who is working, or who has recently been working, whether employed or self-employed. Eligible employees are entitled to share up to 50 weeks of shared parental leave and up to 37 weeks of statutory shared parental pay.

This particular statutory rule sets out the qualifying requirements that must be satisfied by an employee, and their partner, for the employee to qualify for shared parental leave. The requirements are that the mother or adopter must be entitled to some form of maternity or adoption entitlement, have given notice to cut it short, and share the main responsibility for caring for the child with the named partner. For a parent to be eligible to take shared parental leave, they must be an employee and they must pass what is known as the "continuity of employment test". In turn, the other parent in the family must meet another test known as the "employment and earnings test". I will explain these tests.

To meet the continuity of employment test, the person must have worked for the same employer for at least 26 weeks at the end of the fifteenth week before the week in which the child is due — or the week in which an adopter was notified of having been matched with a child for adoption — and must still be employed in the first week that shared parental leave is to be taken. For the employment and earnings test to be met, the person must have worked for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks leading up to the due date and have earned above the maternity allowance threshold of £30 a week in 13 of the 66 weeks. Where both parents satisfy these tests, they will both be able to share the leave.

A family can still use shared parental leave even when only one parent actually meets the eligibility criteria. For example, a self-employed parent will not be entitled to take shared parental leave but could still pass the employment and earnings test, allowing the other parent in the family to qualify.

The regulations also set out the notice and evidence requirements which must be met for the employee to qualify for shared parental leave. The regulations further specify that shared parental leave can be taken at any time between the birth of a child, or the placement of a child for adoption or with prospective adopters, and must be taken before the child’s first birthday or the first anniversary of the placement. An eligible mother or adopter must cut short maternity or adoption leave for shared parental leave to become available. She or he may do this — as is the case now — by simply returning to work, or she or he may do it by giving notice to curtail the leave at a specified future date. The curtailment of maternity or adoption leave and pay is dealt with in separate regulations. As with similar statutory arrangements, employers are free to go beyond the statutory minimum requirements in an effort to attract and retain employees.

It is important that I also draw Members’ attention a few wider points. Equality is a key driver behind the shared parental leave and pay package as a whole. The new rights are a contribution to enabling cultural change in how women’s and men’s caring responsibilities are perceived vis-à-vis their role in the workplace. The perception that women are the carers, and therefore the only ones who will be absent from work following childbirth or adoption, need no longer be the accepted norm. Shared parental leave and pay will help challenge hidden prejudices that may adversely impact on women’s career prospects. Likewise, for those men who want to take an active role in childcare, these enhanced legislative provisions now enable them to do so from the point of their child’s birth or placement for adoption.

I should highlight that none of this erodes the protections that are already in place for employed mothers. An employed mother will continue to be entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance. It is only if she chooses to do so that an eligible mother can now end her statutory maternity leave early and opt to take shared parental leave. As is the case throughout this legislative package, similar provisions also apply to adopters and adoption leave. For fathers, paid paternity leave of two weeks will continue to be available, both to birth fathers and a mother's or adopter's partner.

I turn now to the regulatory impact of the measures. The projected set-up and administration costs to employers are relatively small. A regulatory impact assessment, carried out on the basis of the corresponding exercise in Great Britain, has identified only modest costs in respect of the package of new rights for working parents. Across all regulations I bring before the Assembly today, the assessment anticipates one-off transitional costs across all employers totalling £1·5 million, which relates to the cost of management time and changes to payroll and human resources systems in implementing the new right. Annually recurring costs of three quarters of a million pounds are expected to be associated with parents exercising the new rights in respect of adoption leave and pay, antenatal appointments, unpaid parental leave and shared parental leave and pay.

I want to reiterate what I said on many occasions, namely that these measures are not only good for parents but for business and the economy. By increasing employees' abilities to balance their work and family commitments, the new rights should improve employers' ability to retain their best people. By working with their employees to develop practical plans for sharing leave and pay with a partner, employers may also see key workers being absent for shorter periods of time as shared childcare becomes a social norm.

Whilst employers have generally been positive about shared parental leave and pay, I do, however, take on board concerns that they have raised about the practical implications of operating the new systems. Those concerns were echoed by the Committee for Employment and Learning, which sought assurances that my Department would engage with employers to ensure that supporting guidance materials meet their needs.

The Department has published detailed guidance, which was shared with employers before being finalised. We will continue to work closely with key stakeholders to ensure that all the guidance materials are fit for purpose. My officials have also delivered a number of free seminars on shared parental leave and pay, in conjunction with the Labour Relations Agency, to employers and trade union members. Those have been well received. Further sessions in association with the Labour Relations Agency and the Equality Commission are scheduled in the next few weeks.

I can assure the House that my Department fully appreciates that some employers may experience challenges. My Department is therefore committed to continued engagement with stakeholders as shared parental leave and pay arrangements become embedded.

I have attempted to set out for Members the key features of the rights to shared parental leave and pay in respect of the first motion, and I will, over the course of the session, deal separately and succinctly with the provisions of the other regulations as the remaining motions on shared parental leave and pay are put to the House this morning. However, I do appreciate that the regulations are specific and technical in places. I have no difficulty if Members wish to explore any issues in broader terms, and I will seek to address those issues.

I will briefly turn to the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, which are also part of this initial debate. They are also subject to the confirmatory procedure as laid down in the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996.

The pay regulations, in association with the leave regulations already considered, provide an entitlement for a mother/adopter and a child's father/adoptive parent or a mother's or adopter's partner to take shared parental leave and pay. Those particular regulations set out the qualifying requirements that must be satisfied by an employee and also by their partner for the employee to qualify for statutory shared parental pay. They also set out the notice and evidence requirements that must be met for employees and agency workers to qualify.

Like shared parental leave, shared statutory parental pay can be taken at any time between the birth of a child, or the placement of a child for adoption or with prospective adopters, and the child's first birthday or the first anniversary of the placement. Statutory shared parental pay is comprised of untaken statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance, or untaken statutory adoption pay. An eligible mother or adopter must curtail her entitlement to those statutory payments in order for statutory shared parental pay to become available. She or he may do that, as now, by simply returning to work. Alternatively, she or he may do it by giving a curtailment notice at any specified future date. The curtailment of maternity or adoption leave and pay is facilitated by separate regulations. Statutory shared parental pay is currently paid at £139·58 per week or 90% of an employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. If the mother or adopter curtails their entitlement to maternity adoption pay or maternity allowance before they have used their full entitlement, statutory shared parental pay can be claimed for any remaining weeks.

To qualify for statutory shared parental pay, a parent must pass the continuity of employment test and have earned an average salary of the lower earnings limit of £111 for the eight weeks prior to the fifteenth week before the expected due date or matching date. The other parent in the family must meet the employment and earnings test already outlined in respect of the leave regulations. As with the leave arrangements, employers are of course free to go beyond the statutory minimum pay requirements where they consider that this will benefit the recruitment and retention of employees.

I am grateful to the Committee for Employment and Learning and the Examiner of Statutory Rules for their scrutiny of the two statutory rules. I am also grateful to the Committee for its recommendation that these regulations be confirmed by the Assembly.

Photo of Robin Swann Robin Swann UUP 11:15, 12 May 2015

I thank the Minister for outlining the detail of the rules and regulations. I welcome the opportunity to outline the Committee for Employment and Learning's views on the statutory rules relating to the Work and Families Act (Northern Ireland) 2015. On behalf of the Committee, I would like to thank the Minister and his officials for their engagement with the Committee during the briefing on all the statutory rules, as there were a considerable number of them.

The Committee was actively involved in the passage of the Work and Families Act, which received Royal Assent in January. In its detailed consideration at Committee Stage, it became apparent that the regulations, not the Act, would provide the detail of how the main rights operated in practice. The Committee raised a number of issues at Committee Stage, but it was content to ensure that these were covered by the statutory rules.

As the Minister has grouped the statutory rules, I will speak briefly on each to confirm the Committee's position. The Committee considered the issues raised at Committee Stage when the proposals for these regulations were considered at its meeting on 11 February 2015 and agreed that it was content with the proposals for the statutory rules.

The Committee, at its meeting on 18 March 2015, agreed that it was content with the Department's statutory rule, the Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, and agreed to recommend that the rule be confirmed by the Assembly.

At a meeting on 25 March 2015, the Committee agreed that it was content with the Department's statutory rule, the Statutory Shared Parental Pay (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, and agreed to recommend that it be confirmed by the Assembly.

Photo of Seán Rogers Seán Rogers Social Democratic and Labour Party

My SDLP colleagues and I welcomed the Work and Families Act. In turn, we welcome and support all these regulations. The Work and Families Act was designed to help to address inequality by taking steps towards creating a culture of shared parenting. I welcome these regulations, which provide for qualifying birth parents, adopters and intended parents in surrogacy arrangements to qualify for shared parental leave.

Photo of Stephen Farry Stephen Farry Alliance

I will be much briefer this time, Mr Deputy Speaker. First, I thank the Committee Chair for setting out the Committee's position. I thank him, the Committee staff and all the members for the very expeditious way in which they addressed these very important and very complex regulations. The Chair was right to identify that the regulations are very much at the heart of giving effect to the Act and are where the key detail is contained. I am confident that we got these right. Of course, we remain open to further consideration should that view change over the years ahead. I welcome Mr Rogers's comments endorsing the broad thrust of the Act and on the importance of the regulations to give effect to it.

Photo of John Dallat John Dallat Social Democratic and Labour Party

I remind Members that I will put the Question on each of the two motions listed on the Order Paper separately.

Question put and agreed to. Resolved:

That the Shared Parental Leave Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 be approved.