Seamus: The regulations in England are known as Parental Bereavement Leave Regulations 2020. It's also known as Jack's Law. Jack was a poor boy that drowned, and his mother has been advocating for this bereavement leave for parents. It goes into effect in England on the 6th of April of this year.

I did see it for the first time come up on Twitter yesterday. I've been cautious about that, but I do understand that this will formally come out later on today, so it is breaking news in that sense. But I did see it on Twitter yesterday that the Minister for the Department of Economy had said that she was very keen to bring the provisions into Northern Ireland as well. Hopefully, we'll see those.

The idea behind this is that, presently, there aren't any provisions in place for any parent that has a child that dies or passes away, so there's no bereavement leave now.

I think, from my experience, employers do tend to be good about the situations. This is never a pleasant situation, and employers are sympathetic, but we've nothing in law about that. If you get a harsh or a hard-core employer that maybe doesn't provide for anything at all, at least this gives the employee a bit of comfort here.

It is two weeks. Questions around if you are a parent and you lose a child . . . this set of legislation only provides for a child up to the age of 18, so there's no entitlement if you have a child over 18 that dies. There will be questions, I think, for a lot of people in and around that, but it only applies for a child up to and under 18, and thereafter there's a right for these two weeks.

Very similar provisions in terms of the entitlement for pay. It's similar to what you would see on a statutory basis anyway for the likes of maternity leave. There is a requirement that you have to be employed for at least 26 weeks before there is an entitlement for pay. If you don't have the entitlement at that point, you still get two weeks off, but it's unpaid at that point. So just a few things there to watch out for.

Scott: It's similar to all the maternity stuff and the other parental leave and so on, the £151.20, or whatever it is, or 90% of your earnings for those two weeks. It's got to be taken within 56 weeks to account for things like anniversaries and so on.

Seamus: Yeah, if the anniversary of the death or if there are birthdays, there are certain periods like that. You get these two weeks. You can only take them in one-week blocks. You can take a week, and then you can take another week maybe around anniversaries or birthdays and things like that as well.

For a lot of people, it doesn't seem to have gone far enough, but it is a starting point, and if you look further into what's happening in Europe and some of the Nordic countries as well, they have very much moved on a lot of things, not just the bereavement leave but into parental leave and things like that. You can see the advances that are being made for equality in and around all that, but this is, I think, to be welcomed, and it's a positive step.

You need to be careful as well. One thing that was flagged up that I thought was interesting was again in Northern Ireland. People have different religious beliefs when it comes to funeral arrangements and things like that. Sometimes funerals are very quick. Sometimes they aren't. They can be a number of weeks away. Employers do need to bear that in mind as well, and we do live in a diverse society now.

Obviously, post any sort of bereavement, there can be issues that arise in relation to mental health and in relation to how quickly people can recover and not recover. Post-traumatic stress disorder is another one. We can see the benefit of our discrimination laws step in then at that point to protect the employee.

There's a lot contained within it, but I have no doubt that I think it would be a positive step, certainly, to align the legislation here in Northern Ireland as well.

Parental Bereavement Leave for Employees With Less Than 26 Weeks Service

"Just to confirm, if not sufficient service, which is 26 weeks, then assuming once the parental bereavement leave regulations come into Northern Ireland, the employee is still entitled to take up to two weeks unpaid bereavement leave within a 56-week period of the death".

Seamus: Yes. If you don't have the 26 weeks, you still are entitled to the leave. It's just unpaid.

Scott: "What about dependency leave where a staff member keeps taking sporadic days to look after a sick dependent, but these days are in excess of 30 a year? Is there a limit to this?"

Seamus: There's no limit contained within the legislation about that. The aspect is that that's for emergency situations, either if you're a carer or if you have young children, if it's a parent or a sibling, if you have a responsibility. Again, the present position is you're permitted to have time off but no payment in relation to it.

I suppose that you could have discussions with the employee about your concerns in and around the level of absence and whether that's causing a knock-on effect and impact on the business, but you'd be concerned.