British parents will be entitled to bereavement leave if they lose a pregnancy before 24 weeks, under Labour’s workers’ rights reforms.

The government is set to amend the Employment Rights Bill to give parents the legal right to take time off work to grieve if they experience pregnancy loss at any stage.

The NHS says a miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy during the first 23 weeks. It reports that around one in eight known pregnancies will end in miscarriage. According to Tommy’s, a pregnancy and baby charity, 50 per cent of adults in the UK said that they, or someone they know, had experienced pregnancy or baby loss.

People are affected by a traumatic loss such as this differently, but it will often take an emotional, mental, and physical toll on parents who experience miscarriage. And, as it stands, bereavement leave is only available to parents who lose an unborn child after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said to the BBC that the change will give “people time away from work to grieve.”

“No one who is going through the heartbreak of pregnancy loss should have to go back to work before they are ready,” Rayner said.

Currently, parents are entitled to up to two weeks of bereavement leave if they experience a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy or a child under 18 dies. They can also be eligible for two weeks’ statutory parental bereavement pay if they have been working for their employer for at least 26 weeks.

Now, amendments to the bill will see the right to “at least one week’s leave” widened to people who lose a pregnancy before 24 weeks.

The exact length of the leave, as well as further details such as who will be eligible and whether a doctor’s note would be required, will be specified in later legislation, and after consultation.

This move will be welcomed by many, as, until now, parents who experienced a pregnancy loss under 24 weeks had to rely on employers’ rules on bereavement leave to grieve their loss.

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Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Labour MP Sarah Owen, called the move a “huge step forward to recognising that loss as a bereavement.”

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that women were currently entitled to “absolutely nothing, aside from maybe sick leave.”

“We know so many women just will not take it, and it also enforces the feeling that there’s something wrong with you,” she added. 

 

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She also told the Today programme that the “overwhelming sense” she felt after her own miscarriage was of grief and loss rather than any physical issues. “Nobody says ‘get well soon’ once you’ve had a miscarriage, they say ‘I’m really sorry for your loss.’ It’s fantastic to see the law catch up with this.”

Owen previously campaigned for the change. She said in a report in January that there is “an ‘overwhelming’ case for changing the law to end differences in the way employers treat people affected by pregnancy loss.”

The bill is currently moving through Parliament, with the changes expected to come into effect in 2027, according to the Miscarriage Association.