Lengthorn: Overwhelming week
A solicitor who campaigned successfully for couples who experience a miscarriage to receive two weeks of unpaid leave has said she will continue until it becomes paid.
Keeley Lengthorn, a partner at RWK Goodman in London, said she was concerned that without paid leave parents would go back to work earlier that they should do “without the healing”.
Northern Ireland introduced two weeks of statutory paid leave for couples who experienced a miscarriage before 24 weeks in April this year, and Ms Lengthorn said she did not understand why getting the time off should depend on which side of the Irish Sea you lived.
The solicitor, who specialises in public law family work, said she would push for a meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make the case for statutory paid leave. Otherwise, she was concerned that financial pressure would force bereaved parents to return to work early.
“The campaign goes on. I don’t know how employees can be expected to return to work after such a significant life experience.
“Surely allowing employees this leave will help employers retain them and make them more committed. I will fight for it until it becomes paid.”
The prime minister confirmed last week that the right to two weeks of unpaid leave for miscarriages at any point would be included in the Employment Rights Act, to be implemented in April next year.
Having suffered three miscarriages in three years, Ms Lengthorn campaigned for George’s Law – named after the third of them, who died when she was 22 weeks pregnant.
The aim was to give workers statutory leave to recover following the loss of a baby in the first 24 weeks of a pregnancy – the right currently exists only if it happens after that time.
She described herself as “crying my eyes out with tears of happiness” after learning in March last year that the government was going to introduce it.
The uncertainty which followed was “frustrating to say the least”, but with a new government coming in, the issue went “to the bottom of the agenda”.
Ms Lengthorn was last week also one of six solicitors recognised by the Law Society in its annual Legal Hero awards.
She was “shocked and very humbled”, and said the combination of the two events was “pretty overwhelming”.
The solicitor said that over the last four years she had been “going round law firms and chambers, urging them to implement baby loss policies and I know that many have”.
Baby Loss Awareness Week later this month was an ideal time for law firms to introduce both baby loss policies and training.
Ms Lengthorn is deputy vice president of Kent Law Society, due to be president in 2028, and occupies the public law seat on the national Law Society’s council.
She added that lawyers did not just interpret the law. “Sometimes we can change it. We can use our skills so people who otherwise would not be heard are heard.
“The most powerful thing we can do is create something better for the people who come after us. I hope I’ve achieved that in my son’s name.”
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