Pregnancy and maternity discrimination is unlawful and has no place in modern society. It is totally wrong that some employers still behave in this way and I am assured that Ministers are committed to tackling this problem.
Current protections mean that before making an employee on maternity leave redundant, employers must offer them a suitable alternative vacancy, where one is available. This gives the woman priority over other employees who are also at risk of redundancy, challenging the default of automatically offering redundancy to the women on maternity leave first.
Following a review of this policy, the Government recently consulted on extending the existing protection into the six months following the new mother's return. Rather than making it automatically unlawful for a new mother to be made redundant, this special protection would place the new mother in a preferential position compared to colleagues, giving her first refusal on any suitable alternative vacancy. I understand that the Government is currently analysing the feedback to the consultation and I look forward to hearing the outcome in due course.
I also understand that Ministers intend to bring forward proposals on creating a new, single labour market enforcement agency to better ensure that vulnerable workers are more aware of and can exercise their rights, and that businesses are better supported to comply with the law. Together with the proposed change to redundancy protection, I hope this will help tackle discrimination and change the negative culture that can exist around new mothers in the workplace.