Clause 1 - Paternity leave
Employment Bill
9:30 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
This substantive point is a little complicated, so I hope that the Committee will bear with me. The amendments together seek to change the circumstances in which someone would be entitled to paternity leave in the case of adoption. I do not want anyone to think that this is a complex argument about trying to exclude same sex adoption couples, and so on. That is a different debate, which we shall not have today.
I take it that the proper intention of the provision is to deal with any pair of adopters when one will be entitled to adoption leave and the other, regardless of gender, will be entitled to paternity leave. I do not want to discuss whether that is a bizarre use of language, but that is what the Government intend. However, the Bill states that a person could be entitled to paternity leave as a result of their relationship with a person who is an adopter. In other words, a person
who is not officially part of the adoptive couple could be entitled to paternity leave.
Some Committee members are experienced in matters concerning the adoption process and may have something to say about this, but the adoption process involves a significant number of checks to ensure that the person or people who will adopt and care for a child are appropriate and that the child's safety will be assured. The Bill seems to contemplate that a person who has not been vetted and approved as an adopter will be endorsed by the state by the granting of statutory paternity leave to care for the child because of a relationship with a person who has been so vetted and approved. We do not want to endorse people as carers of a newly adopted child if they are not officially the adopters. That is an important point.
In the vast majority of cases, one would expect the person taking adoption leave to be the woman and the person taking paternity leave to be her husband, or her partner if the couple are not married. The same situation will apply in relation to same sex couples. One person will be entitled to adoption leave and one person will be entitled to paternity leave. However, I should have thought that both should be joint adopters of the child. The provision could grant paternity rights at the moment of the placement to someone who is, as it were, not on the ticket. That alarms me.