Bereavement leave for up to 3 working days for unplanned pregnancy loss · petition

What the petition asks

Issue a National bill making it clear that the unplanned end to a pregnancy by miscarriage or still birth constitutes bereavement leave for the mother and her partner or spouse and that the duration of the bereavement leave should be up to 3 working days.

Currently families who experience unplanned pregnancy loss by miscarriage or still birth do not have paid bereavement leave in the UK. This often results in women and families requiring time off as sickness leave. Which can in some cases, result in an impact on their income. The unplanned loss of a pregnancy is a bereavement to the family and should be treated in line with bereavement leave constituting up to 3 days leave.

Why it was rejected

There was already a petition about this issue. Duplicates are rejected so signatures collect in one place.

Bereavement leave is already available to people who lose a pregnancy after 24 weeks, and we have published the following petitions calling for this leave to be extended to all pregnancy loss, which you might like to sign:

Extend statutory bereavement leave to pregnancy loss before 24 weeks: Extend statutory bereavement leave to pregnancy loss before 24 weeks

The existing entitlement to statutory bereavement leave is for one or two week's leave. People taking statutory bereavement leave are entitled to get either £151.97 a week or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) if you’re eligible.

If you would like the Government to change statutory bereavement leave in a different way to the above petition, we could accept a new petition requesting this, but it would need to be clear how you wanted existing entitlements to be changed.

You can read more about Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay and Leave here: https://www.gov.uk/parental-bereavement-pay-leave

Timeline

13 May 2021	Petition opened for signatures
19 May 2021	Rejected by the Petitions Committee