‘Why ‘Hugh’s Law’ should be the next step for working families’

When your child is born, we rightly recognise that there are moments in life when being a parent must come before being an employee. We provide maternity and paternity rights. We have introduced neonatal care leave. We understand that families need time, protection, and financial security when their child needs them. But what happens when that same child is five, eight, or twelve and is suddenly diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness?

For too many parents, the answer is frighteningly simple: there is no equivalent statutory paid leave designed for that moment. That is the gap Hugh’s Law exists to close.

My son Hugh was five when he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. For ten months, our lives became chemotherapy, surgery, intensive care, radiotherapy, scans and emergency admissions. Hugh died in September 2021. He was six years old. When Hugh was diagnosed, our world stopped. But everything else carried on. The mortgage still needed paying. Bills still arrived. Work continued. Hugh’s brothers still needed us. Alongside trying to keep our son alive, We were expected to work out how to keep the rest of our lives functioning. Nobody prepares a parent for that.

READ MORE: ‘MPs must give babies a voice in Parliament’

That is why my wife Frances and I have campaigned for Hugh’s Law: statutory paid leave for parents and primary caregivers when their child becomes seriously ill.

The principle is simple. If we protect a parent’s time when a child enters the world, surely we should protect it when that child’s life is suddenly in danger. This is not about taking anything away from existing parental rights. It is about extending the same principle of dignity and security to another extraordinary moment in a child’s life.

And increasingly, others agree. The Children’s Commissioner for England has backed Hugh’s Law and called for paid leave for parents of seriously ill children. But one of the clearest demonstrations that change is both possible and needed has come from employers themselves. Forty-two businesses have now voluntarily adopted the principles of Hugh’s Law, meaning more than thirty-two thousand employees across the country are covered.

Nobody forced those businesses to do it. They did it because they looked at what happens when an employee’s child becomes seriously ill and concluded that supporting that parent is simply the right thing to do. Those employers are showing us that Hugh’s Law can work. But they are also exposing the unfairness of the current system. Whether a parent can stay beside their seriously ill child should not depend on which company name appears at the top of their payslip.

A parent working for an employer that has adopted Hugh’s Law may have security; another parent, sitting beside them on exactly the same hospital ward, with a child undergoing exactly the same treatment, may have none. Goodwill is not the same as a right. And good employers should not be expected to fill a structural gap in our employment system alone.

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There has been progress in government too. Ministers deserve credit for recognising the issue and launching a formal consultation examining employment rights for parents of seriously ill children, including Hugh’s Law. That process has now closed.

The question is what happens next. When the Government publishes its recommendations, I hope we move from recognising the problem to legislating for a solution. Hugh’s Law should also be part of something wider. Parents need rapid mental-health support. Brothers and sisters need recognition and help. Families need practical assistance navigating employment and benefits. And crucially, that support cannot simply disappear if treatment becomes palliative or a child dies.

Government cannot remove the terror of hearing that your child is seriously ill. It cannot make chemotherapy easier or remove the fear of waiting for scan results. And it cannot take away the devastation when treatment does not work. But government can decide what happens around that family. It can decide whether a parent sitting beside their child also has to worry about losing their income or their job.

Hugh’s Law started with what happened to our family. Today, it has the backing of the Children’s Commissioner, has been considered through a government process, and its principles already protect more than thirty-two thousand employees because businesses choose voluntarily to do the right thing. Now we need to make sure that protection does not depend on luck.

Because no parent whose child is seriously ill should ever have to say, “I want to be with my child, but I can’t afford to”.

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