Stella Creasy treatment shows baby rules at Parliament are out of order and betray working mothers – Yorkshire Post Letters

IN her criticism of the MP Stella Creasy for taking her baby into a Parliamentary debate, Christa Ackroyd misses the fundamental point that, bizarrely, MPs do not have the employment rights accorded to everyone else (The Yorkshire Post, November 27).

The legal rights of working mothers during the weeks following the birth of a child do not also apply to them and this really is a nonsensical situation.

The action of the Commons authorities in this case reminded me of an issue I was faced with during my time as Chair of the Commons Health Committee, when a colleague on the committee had recently given birth.

Bearing in mind that the committee had not long before strongly argued in a report for the encouragement of breast-feeding, my cross-party colleagues and I had no problem with her feeding her baby during meetings, but I was very sternly warned that this was against Commons rules.

I was told that this was in breach of the clear requirement that “no refreshments are allowed during Committee meetings”.

Bearing in mind that, as a councillor, I was taking our baby son into meetings in Wakefield Town Hall as far back as the 1980s, I find it incredible that almost 40 years later this is seen as such an issue in the Commons.