Parents who experience a miscarriage before 24 weeks of pregnancy will be entitled to bereavement leave under a planned law change.
The government is set to amend the Employment Rights Bill to give parents the legal right to take time off work to grieve if they experience pregnancy loss at any stage.
As it stands, bereavement leave is only available to parents who lose an unborn child after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said the change will give “people time away from work to grieve”.
“No one who is going through the heartbreak of pregnancy loss should have to go back to work before they are ready,” Rayner said.
Parents are currently entitled to a fortnight’s leave if they suffer pregnancy loss after 24 weeks, or if a child younger than 18 dies.
They can also be eligible for two weeks’ statutory parental bereavement pay – either £187.18 a week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is the lower – if they have been working for their employer for at least 26 weeks.
The proposed extended right to leave would be unpaid and last for at least one week, though the exact length is still being consulted on.
Further details – including who will be eligible and whether a doctor’s note would be required – will also be decided following a consultation.
The measure would apply in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.
The Employment Rights Bill, which includes further measures to protect in law the right of employees to have time off to grieve the loss of a loved one, is already making its way through Parliament.
Labour MP Sarah Owen, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, called the move a “huge step forward to recognising that loss as a bereavement”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that women were currently entitled to “absolutely nothing, aside from maybe sick leave”.
She said: “We know so many women just will not take it, and it also enforces the feeling that there’s something wrong with you.”
Owen, who previously campaigned for the change, said that the “overwhelming sense” she felt after her own miscarriage was of grief and loss rather than any physical issues.
“Nobody says ‘get well soon’ once you’ve had a miscarriage, they say ‘I’m really sorry for your loss’. It’s fantastic to see the law catch up with this.”
Musician and broadcaster Myleene Klass, who was made an MBE for services to miscarriage awareness, likewise said the news was a “marker for all of the families who have been ignored”.
She told the BBC it was right that people would no longer be limited to taking sick leave because “you’re not ill, you’ve lost a child, there’s a death in the family”.
Klass said the topic had long been “swept under the carpet,” adding it was only after experiencing pregnancy loss herself that many of her friends and family shared their “deep dark secret” of having had miscarriages, too.
She said: “It’s a taboo – nobody wants to talk about dead babies – but you have to actually say it as it is. To lose a child is harrowing, it’s traumatic.”
Helena, who runs a beauty salon in Manchester where she currently employs three members of staff, told the BBC she had concerns about how the change would impact small businesses such as hers.
“This might work for larger businesses but I can’t afford my staff taking more time off.
“I had a miscarriage years ago and the healthiest thing for me to do was to keep busy and get back to work.”
In March, business minister Justin Madders told MPs he accepted the principle of bereavement leave for pregnancy loss and promised to look at adding the right to the Employment Rights Bill.
Vicki Robinson, chief executive of the Miscarriage Association, said on Monday the move would make a big difference towards acknowledging the “emotional element” of pregnancy loss.
She told BBC Breakfast that it can be “really anxiety-inducing going back to work when you’re still grieving your loss,” adding that “for partners at the moment there is absolutely nothing”.
The change will help “protect the right for people to take time off work without penalty or punishment” after such a loss, she said.
The CBI, which lobbies on behalf of businesses in the UK, said: “Pregnancy loss is a devastating experience yet it is also sadly all too common.
“Good employers recognise the importance of supporting their staff to take the time they need to grieve by ensuring that they don’t feel under pressure to return to work before they are ready.”
The government estimates around 250,000 pregnancies end through miscarriage every year.
According to the pregnancy charity Tommy’s, most miscarriages take place in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
