Pregnancy and parental rights

Dismissing a woman because she is pregnant or for any reason connected with her pregnancy is automatically unfair (section 99(1)(a) ERA 96).

Dismissing a woman while on maternity leave is automatically unfair if the reason for the dismissal is that she has given birth or any other reason connected with her having given birth (section 99(1)(b) ERA 96).

Dismissing a woman for a pregnancy-related illness or for any other reason connected to pregnancy or maternity during the protected period (i.e. from the start of pregnancy to the end of maternity leave) is pregnancy or maternity discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 (EA 10) (see page 150).

As long as some part of the reason for dismissing a woman is to do with her pregnancy or maternity, it will be automatically unfair. It does not matter that there might be other reasons for the dismissal.

This protection against automatically unfair dismissal for pregnancy or maternity reasons extends to temporary employees (Webb v EMO Cargo (UK) Limited [1994] QB 718).

This protection also extends to the non-renewal of a fixed term contract where the reason for the non-renewal is that the woman will be unavailable for work at the start of the new term because of pregnancy. The EAT said that any other conclusion would encourage employers to try to get around the laws banning pregnancy discrimination by issuing successive fixed-term contracts (Caruana v Manchester Airport [1995] UKEAT 687/94/1411).

Dismissing employees for exercising maternity, parental, paternity or adoption leave rights (or shared parental leave rights for babies born or matched for adoption on or after 5 April 2015) is automatically unfair (see Chapter 8). For the law on pregnancy and maternity in the context of redundancy, see Chapter 11, pages 356-358.