Dr Stephenson:

On your first point, as I said earlier, women’s unpaid work is at the heart of their economic inequality. One thing we need to do is to have a better balance of those unpaid caring responsibilities between women and men.

The paternity and parental leave changes in the Bill are a step—a small step. We need to go much further, because we still have one of the biggest gaps in Europe between the entitlement for fathers and second parents and the entitlement for mothers. We also need men to have periods of leave in their own right that they are not taking while the mother is on leave.

The thing about paternity leave is that it is generally taken immediately after the birth and it is about providing support to a new mother just after she has given birth. It is a very difficult time: the first time you do not know what you are doing, and the second time you normally have a toddler to look after as well as a baby, so you need more than one pair of hands.

If we are going to change patterns of caring, there needs to be provision that would encourage and support men to have leave after their partners have gone back to work, where they are the sole carer, because it is not until you are the sole carer in charge of a baby that you actually understand what it is really like. If you are one of two parents at all times, there is always somebody else to do it. That needs a different type of leave.

We have called for a period of maternity leave, which is about recovering from childbirth, establishing breastfeeding and so on; for a period of paternity/partner leave, which is about supporting a new mother; and then for both parents to have a period of what we would call parental leave, which is about caring for a child. Both of those need to be paid, and they need to be individualised. We think that would make a difference. That is something that we hope would come out of longer-term reviews of maternity, paternity and parental leave.

In terms of whether the Bill would lead to a decrease in jobs for people with protected characteristics, as I said earlier, that warning is often heard when you improve employment rights—that actually, it will lead to job losses. That has not proved to be the case thus far, and I do not think the changes in the Bill are so significant that they would lead to job losses. For example, the changes to paternity leave are relatively minimal—it is about making it a day one right, rather than making people wait. It will really help those whom it benefits, but it would be unusual for an employer to go, “Actually, men now have a day one right to paternity leave, therefore I’m not going to employ them.” Of course, men have a protected characteristic of sex, just as women do.

In many areas, improving the situation of workers on zero-hours contracts, who are more likely to be from ethnic minority backgrounds, is more likely to improve their overall standard of living. It will help to lift them and their families out of poverty, so it is more likely to be beneficial.