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10 July 2002

The Employment Bill 2001 provides for new rights to parental leave and pay, adoption leave and pay, and for amendments to existing maternity leave and pay. The detailed implementation of these new provisions, expected to come into force in April 2003, is to be achieved through regulations. The Government has now published a draft of these regulations together with a consultation document.

There are five draft regulations, and five model documents designed as standard templates for use by employers and employees in relation to maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay. The Government invites technical comments on these as well as on the following outstanding policy issues:

• whether the limit of 56 days from the date of the child’s birth, in which an employee will be able to take paternity leave, should be extended where the baby is born prematurely;
• whether paternity leave should be available as two separate one-week periods rather than only in one single period of either one week or two weeks;
• whether adoption leave and pay should continue to be available to the adoptive parent when an adoption placement is terminated either through the child’s death or otherwise;
• the entitlement conditions for paternity leave and pay with reference to the employee’s relationship with the child and mother/adopter;
• the right to return to work after taking consecutive periods of leave under the various new schemes (for example, adoption, followed by parental leave).
• the proposal to permit, in certain circumstances, an employee who works for more than one employer to continue working for one employer while receiving statutory paternity or adoption pay from another. This would mirror existing statutory maternity pay provisions;
• the proposal that an employee remains eligible for statutory adoption and paternity pay even if he or she is imprisoned during any part of the leave period; and
• the proposal in the parental leave draft regulations to increase the notification period for taking parental leave from 21 to 28 days to bring it into line with the intended notification periods for maternity, adoption and paternity leave. The extension would not, however, apply to parental leave in respect of disabled children.

Steen & Co Employment Solicitors will be monitoring the developments in this area of law and will provide information as and when more details are known. For more information please contact us via any of the methods set out on our contact us page.