Last week Maria Miller MP, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, introduced a bill pushing for new protections for pregnant women and new mothers against discrimination in the workplace.

The Pregnancy and Maternity (Redundancy Protection) Bill 2019 would introduce a prohibition against making employees redundant during and for six months after the end of pregnancy and maternity leave. The proposed bill would provide certain exceptions to the rule although these have not yet been published.

This bill comes almost three years after the Committee produced a report in August 2016 investigating pregnancy and maternity leave discrimination.That report referenced joint research carried out by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills and the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2015, which revealed that more women were being made redundant or felt forced to leave their job because of their pregnancy than in the previous decade. The research also found that three quarters of women surveyed had experienced negative or potentially discriminatory treatment in the workplace relating to their pregnancy or maternity leave. Other research showed that many employers were not providing sufficient care for the health and safety of pregnant employees. Casual part-time workers were also found to be more susceptible to pregnancy and maternity discrimination than permanent or full-time employees.

The report went on to suggest solutions to address the issues highlighted by the research. Perhaps most prominently, the report suggested that employers should not be able to make employees redundant whilst they are pregnant or on maternity leave and for the six months after pregnancy or maternity leave has ended. This would parallel law in Germany imposing a ‘dismissal ban’ on employers for employees at the beginning of pregnancy until 4 months after childbirth. The intention of this suggestion was to prevent employers from making employees redundant soon after the protected period of maternity leave has ended. 

The report went on to suggest solutions to address the issues highlighted by the research. Perhaps most prominently, the report suggested that employers should not be able to make employees redundant whilst they are pregnant or on maternity leave and for the six months after pregnancy or maternity leave has ended. This would parallel law in Germany imposing a ‘dismissal ban’ on employers for employees at the beginning of pregnancy until 4 months after childbirth. The intention of this suggestion was to prevent employers from making employees redundant soon after the protected period of maternity leave has ended. 

The report suggested exceptions to this rule, including “severe financial difficulty for the employer leading to multiple redundancies and gross misconduct by the individual”. These may be the same exceptions contained in the bill proposed by Maria Miller MP last week.

It should be noted that gross misconduct is a separate issue entirely from redundancy. Further, any exception allowing employers to make pregnant employees or new mothers redundant on the basis of “severe financial difficulty” will need to be drafted carefully. It can be said that many if not most redundancy situations arise from financial difficulty and severity is relative. Any legislation containing this exception would need to clearly define “severe financial difficulty”, to prevent employers from claiming this exception superficially. Lastly, the fact of multiple redundancies does not indicate that discrimination has not caused the redundancy dismissal of pregnant employees or employees on maternity leave. For example, an employee being pregnant or on maternity leave could play a part in their selection during a redundancy process. In such a case their redundancy would be discriminatory, regardless of there being real financial difficulty or the fact that other employees are also being made redundant.

At Bindmans LLP we regularly receive enquiries from women who have been made redundant whilst on maternity leave, shortly after maternity leave or when employers become aware that they are pregnant. It remains a persistent problem of discrimination and how women are treated in the workplace. We therefore welcome discussion about tackling discrimination and mistreatment and calls for new protections in the law.

The Pregnancy and Maternity (Redundancy Protection) Bill 2019 is a “Private Members’ Bill”, and bills of this type are understood to have low chances of becoming law. Nevertheless, we hope the attempt continues the discourse on how women can be protected from this discrimination in the workplace.