Campaign leads to bill for statutory leave for the bereaved
SEVEN years ago bereaved mother Lucy Herd started a campaign for bereavement leave. Tragically, her son Jack drowned in 2010 after falling into the garden pond when he was nearly two.
She was shocked to find that Jack’s father as a bereaved parent could only take three days of paid bereavement leave, one of which had to be for the funeral.
Lucy started a campaign for more statutory bereavement leave.
Last Friday, more than seven years later, a bill was published which will entitle parents who suffer the death of a child under the age of 18 to two weeks of bereavement leave.
Where the parent has been employed for more than 26 weeks, the leave will also be paid, although the bill does not specify what the rate of pay will be and provides only that it will be prescribed by regulations.
Employers will be able to recover the payment from the government.
A private members bill about statutory bereavement leave was first sponsored by Labour MP Tom Harris in 2013 but did not progress. Conservative MP Will Quince, whose son was stillborn, introduced a similar private members bill in 2016 and it became a Tory party manifesto commitment.
Even though many employers offer compassionate leave, until the bereavement leave bill becomes law, there is no legal requirement on employers to provide this.
The only legal right that currently exists for all employees is reasonable unpaid time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant such as a spouse, child or parent and this would include time off to attend a funeral.
In the absence of being offered compassionate leave by employers, employees suffering bereavement rely on these emergency time off provisions or take holiday or sick leave.
Grief of course can and often does result in sickness, particularly depression, and can become a disability under the Equality Act 2010.
This would then fall to be considered under an employer’s contractual sick pay provisions or in the absence of any contractual rights statutory sick pay.
Confining a statutory right to bereavement leave to one form of terrible loss ignores the reality of personal relationships. The grief at the loss of a child must be overwhelming but so must it be for the loss of a spouse or parent and any number of other relationships. Grief, much like love, varies depending on the people involved, not their titles.
The Bereavement Alliance tweeted following the introduction of the bill “Parental bereavement leave bill is a great start; we’d like to see other grieving employees supported too.”
In Australia, the statutory right to compassionate and bereavement leave is only two days paid leave but it is on each occasion of the death of a spouse or former spouse, de facto partner or former de facto partner, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling or a child, parent, grandparent, grandchild or sibling of the employee’s spouse or de facto partner (or former spouse or de facto partner). The definition includes step-relations and adoptive relations.
It more realistically reflects family relationships although does not include friends, the loss of which could have greater impact on an employee than the deaths of family members falling within the definition.
Possibly the statutory right to bereavement leave will act as a form of nudge tactic.
By giving a statutory right to paid bereavement leave for what is considered by many to be the worst kind of loss, employers will voluntarily offer a similar amount of bereavement leave in other situations.
It is difficult to imagine, for instance, an employer telling a parent that if their 18-year-old sixth-former had died a few months earlier they would have qualified for two weeks of paid leave, but now don’t.
However, on the other hand, employers might argue they are complying with the law and had the government thought more compassionate leave was necessary or desirable they would have made the bill wider in its ambit.
Bethan Darwin is a partner with law firm Thompson Darwin.