Clause 3 - Adoption Leave
Employment Bill
12:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
We can, I hope, now pick up speed because many issues that recur in this clause have already been dealt with. Amendment No. 141 seeks to include in new section 75A a definition of who is to be entitled to ordinary adoption leave. Amendment No. 142 does the same for additional adoption leave under new section 75B.
I acknowledge that the amendments were drafted in light of my position on a previous debate that referred to the distinction between domestic and overseas adoptions. The wording of amendment No. 141 would exclude overseas adoption. I accept that the Minister has already rejected the suggestion that such adoptions should be excluded and I do not necessarily disagree with him on that. I therefore accept that the form of words would not be appropriate to a regime that included provision for overseas adoptions as well as domestic placements.
However, I ask the Minister to address the general question of why a straightforward definition of a person entitled to adoption leave cannot be included in the Bill. The Bill states:
''An employee who satisfies prescribed conditions may be absent from work at any time during an ordinary adoption leave period.''
That could be an employee who is a member of the Labour party or a specified trade union. Although I am being facetious, it seems to be an extraordinarily wide power to simply define an employee ''who satisfies prescribed conditions'' when we all know precisely what those conditions are. The conditions are that the person is, in the terminology of the Bill, an adopter, with whom a child has been placed or is expected to placed. In the case of an adopting couple, it is the person who has elected to take adoption leave, or, in the negative, not the person who has elected to
take paternity leave. Why cannot that definition be included in the Bill?