A baby before 24 weeks still makes you a parent.

A woman who has miscarried is not just grieving.

Give women three weeks to recover from pregnancy loss, at least two of them paid, like Northern Ireland.

To: The Secretary of State for Business and Trade and the Minister for Employment Rights

From 2027, a woman in England, Scotland or Wales who loses her baby before 24 weeks will have a right to bereavement leave for the first time. That is a step in the right direction and we acknowledge it. However, it's a single week, unpaid, under a general entitlement for "the loss of a loved one."

Not parental bereavement. Not the two weeks of paid leave the law gives parents whose baby dies after 24 weeks. A "loved one." The same category as any other loss.

The law is quietly saying that a baby before 24 weeks did not make her a parent. It's also saying that her body is irrelevant. Under this entitlement, a woman who miscarries holds the same right as a colleague grieving a parent or grandparent. Grief is real and deserves every day of leave for everyone, but those who have miscarried return to work bleeding, cramping, exhausted, hormonally and neurologically altered. The NHS tells women to expect bleeding alone to last up to three weeks, longer for later losses. The law has written in her a grief allowance while ignoring the inevitable physical "loss" her body is going through. No other grief asks you to mourn the mental loss, while your body is still going through the physical loss. Filing it under general bereavement doesn't just misname it, it erases the physical event entirely.

Once again, the system has assumed a default body - and it's not female.

99% of losses happen before 24 weeks.

In the UK the Government estimate that 250,000 pregnancies end in miscarriage (before 24 weeks) every year, against an approximate 2,700 stillbirths (after 24 weeks). 99% of losses fall on the unpaid side of that line. The law gives the least support to the most common loss.

A woman whose baby is stillborn at 24 weeks is rightly entitled to her full maternity package — up to 52 weeks of leave, 39 of them paid, plus two weeks of paid parental bereavement leave. A woman who loses her baby at 23 weeks and six days will get one week, unpaid. Suggesting those who lost their babies before 24 week were not "parents" and those babies were not real enough to count.

Unpaid leave is not leave for everyone. The women least able to lose a week's pay are the same women who cannot work from home - the shop assistant, the care worker, the factory line, the delivery driver, the teacher. There is no "taking it easy" in those jobs, no camera-off meeting, nowhere to sit down or monitor emails from bed. So, what do they do? Take an unaffordable Statutory Sick Pay, sacrifice paid holiday or do what women have always done — go back while it is still happening. On their feet for eight-hour shifts, bleeding heavily, cramping, managing it from a staff toilet on a timed break, lifting, driving, serving the public mid-miscarriage. This is not only cruel to her, it is a workplace health risk the law is creating.

An entitlement that exists on paper but costs a week's wages is not a right for women. It is a right for women who can afford it.

Northern Ireland has already answered every objection: since April 2026, women there receive two weeks of paid bereavement leave for pregnancy loss at any stage. NHS England, John Lewis, Channel 4, the Co-op and M&S already offer paid miscarriage leave voluntarily. Recovery should not depend on a postcode or an employer's goodwill.

The consultation on this entitlement closed in January. The Government is deciding the final rules right now. Before the regulations are written, we call on it to:

Recognise pregnancy loss before 24 weeks as parental bereavement, carrying two weeks of paid leave, matching Northern Ireland, plus one further week unpaid: up to three weeks, covering the recovery the NHS itself describes AND the bereavement.
Begin consultation on equivalent support for self-employed women, for whom every provision above assumes an employer they do not have.

The consultation has closed but the decision hasn't been made; this is the window. Please sign now.

Bridget Phillipson

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