Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and to attach my name to Amendment 57, which would provide for six weeks of fully paid paternity leave for servicepeople. The Committee will see that this is perhaps not the broadest alliance across the political spectrum that you might find, but it is certainly up there in the spread that you will typically see in your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, has powerfully outlined, the arguments for the amendment, which I will not repeat, are twofold. First, it is about the welfare of children. It is about children being able to establish a proper relationship and foundation for family life—something that will be with them through their lives. It is also, of course, a big issue for retention and recruitment of servicepeople, so it is an issue for the effectiveness of our Armed Forces. At Second Reading, I addressed this issue with a number of quotes from the survey. I will just add one here. Think about what two weeks is like. This is an RAF officer from the Dad Shift survey: “Both children saw us remain in hospital with our newborn for 3-4 days due to challenges with feeding and jaundice … even low-level complications might result in the first week of paternity leave being spent in hospital”. Those are not circumstances in which, for one week, you will establish a stable relationship—they are extremely stressful, extremely difficult, extremely unnatural circumstances. Then maybe you will have one week or no weeks after that. I know that the Minister said at Second Reading that there is a broader government review of paternity leave, but I do not think, given that we have this Bill before us, that there is any need or any argument for waiting. Action can be taken—and clearly needs to be taken—now. Amendment 67 in this group is in my name. It is a fairly simple amendment which would put into the Bill that the Government must establish a concessionary travel scheme for veterans’ bus travel. The amendment does not specify the exact detail of what concessionary bus travel might be provided, how it might be set out or what level it might be set at; that is clearly the sort of thing that is appropriate for a statutory instrument. If we think about the situation of veterans, some may qualify for concessionary travel because they are older or because they have a qualifying disability, but what about the veteran at the age of 30, 40 or 50 who has no qualifying disability but who returns to the UK, perhaps after many years of service, not having a stable base here in the UK?