UK Offence Report

The Maternity (Compulsory Leave) Regulations 1994

UK Statutory Instrument 1994 No. 2479 — creates 1 criminal offence.

1offences created
0recorded in force
0revoked
Made
21 September 1994
In force from
19 October 1994
Extent
Not stated
Subject
Corporate, financial services, company law, employment, charity, electoral and tax
Made under
European Communities Act 1972

Explanatory note

(This note is not part of the Regulations) — published with the instrument by the department that made it. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

These Regulations, which apply to Great Britain, make provisions which are necessary to give full effect to article 8(2) of Council Directive No 92/85/EEC (OJ no. L348/1). Article 8(2) provides that maternity leave must include compulsory maternity leave of at least two weeks allocated before and/or after confinement in accordance with national legislation and/or practice. Regulation 2 provides that an employee entitled to maternity leave shall not work or be permitted to work by her employer during the period of two weeks beginning with the date of her confinement. Regulation 3(1) provides that the enforcement and offences provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and the provisions of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1989 shall apply to the prohibition imposed upon an employer by regulation 2 of these Regulations as if the prohibition had been imposed by regulations made under section 15 of that Act. The effect of applying the 1989 Regulations to the prohibition will be that the question of whether the Health and Safety Executive or a particular local authority is the enforcing authority in respect of the prohibition will be determined in accordance with those Regulations. Regulation 3(2) provides that an employer who is guilty of an offence consisting of a breach of a prohibition imposed by regulation 2 shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 2 on the standard scale.

Offences created by this instrument

What Parliament said about it

Hansard was searched for this instrument by name and returned nothing. That is the ordinary outcome: an instrument laid under the negative procedure is usually never debated, and becomes law without a word said about it in either House.

How Parliament handled it

Parliament's Statutory Instruments service records procedure from May 2017 onwards, and this instrument predates it. That is a limit of the source, not a statement that nothing happened.

Check the source