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Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

I have been very clear that all of the existing law under the EU will be brought into British law. There is no intention of changing that. In fact, so far from wanting to dilute current law, in many ways, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) has said, we go further than the EU in a number of important respects. For example, in the UK all workers are protected by a strong set of core rights that do not depend on the type of contract—full time or part time— an employee may be on. That is not consistently the case in other European countries. In the UK, women who have had a child can enjoy 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave and 39 weeks of pay, not just the 14 weeks under EU law.