• a new workplace right to leave for bereaved parents has been given the royal stamp of approval
• employed parents who lose a child under 18 will receive 2 weeks’ leave under the Act, which is expected to come into force in 2020

A new workplace right to paid leave for bereaved parents has been officially enshrined in law today (Thursday 13 September) as the Parental Leave and Pay Bill achieves Royal Assent.

The first law of its kind in the UK will support those affected by the tragedy of childhood mortality and is expected to come into force in 2020.

The new Parental Bereavement Leave and Pay Act will give all employed parents a day-one right to 2 weeks’ leave if they lose a child under the age of 18, or suffer a stillbirth from 24 weeks of pregnancy. Employed parents will also be able to claim pay for this period, subject to meeting eligibility criteria.

This new law honours the manifesto commitment to introduce a new entitlement to parental bereavement leave.

Business Minister Kelly Tolhurst, said:

This law makes Parental Bereavement Leave a legal right for the first time in the UK’s history.

Losing a child is an unimaginable trauma. I am delighted we have reached this important milestone which so many have campaigned for.

I’d like to thank all the people who have helped make this law a reality, including the brave parent campaigners who have spoken out about their own experiences.

Lucy Herd from Jack’s Rainbow said:

When I started the campaign 8 years ago after the death of my son Jack, I always hoped that a change would happen in his memory.

Knowing that 8 years of campaigning has helped create legislation to ensure bereaved parents are protected in the future is such a wonderful feeling and I am so grateful to all those involved.

The government-backed bill was introduced to parliament in July 2017 as a private member’s bill by Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton.

Kevin Hollinkrake MP, Bill sponsor, said:

Losing a child is the most dreadful and unimaginable experience that any parent could suffer and it is right that grieving parents will now be given time to start to come to terms with their loss.

I am grateful to Will Quince MP, who first brought this issue to the fore in a ‘Ten-Minute Rule Motion’ on statutory entitlement during the previous parliamentary session. I am also grateful to Lord Knight and fellow MPs, on both sides of the House, some of whom have shared their own personal stories of losing a beloved child, who have assisted in bringing forward this legislation so quickly.

Will Quince MP said:

There can be few worse life experiences than the loss of a child and while most employers treat their staff with dignity and compassion when this tragedy occurs, all too often we have heard stories of grieving parents being forced back to work too early.

I am delighted that parents in this awful situation will now have the protection of paid leave enshrined in law, and we should be very proud that the UK now has one of the best worker’s rights in this area in the world.

Francine Bates, Chief Executive of The Lullaby Trust said:

At The Lullaby Trust we know how devastating the sudden and unexpected death of a baby or a child is for parents.

This new law is a big step forward in recognising the needs of bereaved families in our society and will help to ensure that parents are not unduly pressurised to return to work immediately following the death of their child.

Steven Wibberley, Chief Executive of Cruse Bereavement Care said:

We are delighted that this bill has been approved as it will make a huge difference to bereaved parents whose lives have been shattered by the death of a child.

It is important that parents are given time to grieve in the aftermath of a child’s death and this new law recognises this.

Madam President, thank you for holding this important debate today and thank you to the Under-Secretary-General and Ms Blakemore for the briefing.

I think there’s been huge amounts of progress on the peacekeeping agenda in the last ten years and there have been some important successes. At the same time, Sarah Blakemore’s testimony reminds us that there is a long way to go. But I think it would be right to start by joining my Swedish colleague in commending the 100,000 UN uniformed peacekeepers and the 14,000 civilian peacekeepers and their commitment to delivering international peace and security. The vast majority of these men and women are courageous and they operate in incredibly challenging conditions. As the Undersecretary-General mentioned, 138 lost their lives last year, and we pay tribute to their sacrifice and we thank their families for allowing them to do the very difficult jobs that they do.

We the Council are responsible for their deployment. We need to do our utmost to improve the safety and security of all peacekeepers and make sure that peacekeeping is as effective and efficient as possible. We need to get the best possible impact from the $7 billion dollars we spend annually on UN peacekeeping. But I also want to say that we need to have multi-dimensional peacekeeping. I don’t agree that missions should not look at human rights and humanitarian – these are conflict drivers. They are root causes. They need to be fixed and we cannot turn the clock back on that so we need military, political and development solutions.

The Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping Initiative provides the basis for making a reality of getting more impact for our money. We’re proud to have endorsed the Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN peacekeeping and we encourage other member states to join.

I’d like to highlight, if I may, four particular areas where I think we should concentrate our efforts to have peacekeeping be more effective.

Firstly, getting it right from the start which is about planning. The Council has an important role to play in improving performance. That starts with the mandates we authorize; these need to be realistic, achievable and developed on the basis of frank advice from the Secretariat but also robust debate by the Council. In turn, we look to the Secretariat to use our peacekeeping resources effectively and to match capabilities to requirements. We often talk about the UN breaking down silos. I would just recall that in Darfur, there are some 27 different UN entities on the ground so this requires coordination, it requires planning, it requires a comparative advantage approach, and it requires a UN-wide approach.

Secondly, making sure it works. A number of speakers this morning have drawn attention to the critical importance of performance. Peacekeepers on the ground need to be equipped, capable and willing to do the job we ask of them. This means we need to strengthen training both before deployment and as troops are in the field. We need a light coordination mechanism on training to be made operational as quickly as possible and this mechanism needs to enable better matching up of those that can provide capacity building and equipment and those that need support.

As the Under-Secretary-General mentioned we need to do more than pay lip service to the role of women. We should make this a priority. Madam President, at the London Defence Ministerial, some 63 countries, including many in this room, called for a doubling of the number of women in military and police contingents by 2020. I hope we can all play a part in making this a reality. For the UK’s part, we have launched WPS Chiefs of Defence Staff Network and we hope that this will promote ways to integrate gender perspectives into military planning and operations and hence improve numbers.

Thirdly is the feedback loop, checking that we know what works and continuous improvement. This means Madam President, a robust and objective evaluation of mission performance. As you said, processes must be transparent and we need better accountability. Between us, we have huge amounts of knowledge to draw on and I hope the Secretariat will be able to speed up the development of a comprehensive performance policy.

Fourthly, when we get it wrong. The failure to be transparent to maintain a culture of accountability can lead to shocking abuses, as Ms. Blakemore was able to outline today. We strongly support the Secretary-General’s zero tolerance policy and we look to its implementation. United Kingdom has provided about $3 million to support the Secretary-General’s efforts and our voluntary funding has improved system-wide coordination, enabled robust vetting and mandatory pre-deployment training. It’s also important that we have good communications so that we can focus on providing redress to victims.

In conclusion Madam President, we need to be confident that our peacekeeping missions are fulfilling their mandates to protect civilians and we must be equally confident that they are fulfilling their duty to protect our own mission personnel. So we need to fulfil our own duty to ensure that these missions are supported and given the necessary resources so they can do their jobs. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much Madam President. Thank you for convening this session which we appreciate very much. It was very good to be able to hear from the Special Envoy. We appreciate the efforts he’s made. We share his disappointment at the fact that the talks did not go ahead as planned but it was good to hear that the consultations he did manage to hold yielded some positive outcomes. I think among those was the inclusivity point that you mentioned Martin, particularly the presence of the women. I think that’s excellent.

But I do urge all sides including the Houthis to get behind the process that the Special Envoy is leading, to invest in confidence-building measures and engage in future consultations in good faith. This is bound to require flexibility from all sides but we all know and we’ve said many times there’s no alternative to a political solution. We do support you. We’d like to continue to support you to the hilt. We can offer Council members some press elements if that would be welcome as a way of expressing that the Council stands behind you at this time as you try and bring all the parties back together.

I think what you said about the economy of Yemen just gives added urgency to an already desperate situation. So I hope we can all build on that.

Thank you Madam President.

Published 12 September 2018

Scotland Secretary David Mundell has hailed the arrival of the V&A Dundee, which opens on Saturday ( 15 September).