You could take Tuesday to book the funeral

If your child died under the age of eighteen, British employment law already had a name for what you were owed at work. Two weeks. Paid, if you met the tests. People still call it Jack's Law, after Jack Herd, who died in 2010 aged 23 months. His mother, Lucy, spent a decade arguing that three days was not enough.

If your child was nineteen, the statute went quiet. You had a right to a "reasonable" amount of unpaid time to deal with an emergency: to arrange a funeral, to attend one. Acas is plain about the rest. Time off for dependants is not time off to grieve. Sitting at the kitchen table on a Tuesday was a matter for your contract, or your manager's mood.

On Tuesday the government said that will change from April 2027. Employees in England, Scotland and Wales will have a day-one right to up to two weeks of unpaid bereavement leave after the death of a spouse or partner, a parent, an adult child or a sibling. Step, half, adoptive, kinship and foster relationships sit in the same list. So does a stepmother. So does the person who raised you in care.

Kate Dearden, the minister for the future of work, put it simply: "No one should have to fight for time to grieve."

The same announcement covers pregnancy loss before 24 weeks: miscarriage, termination, an embryo that does not take after IVF. Partners, the other biological parent, and intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement are included. The government estimates that one in five women in the UK have a miscarriage in their lifetime. Until now that loss had no statutory leave of its own. Paid leave when a child under eighteen dies, or after a stillbirth from 24 weeks, stays where it is.

You will not have to prove it. No death certificate on the HR desk. Notice can be the same day for the first eight weeks, then a week's notice after that. You can take the days in a block or one at a time, across 56 weeks, which is long enough for a funeral and a first anniversary. The leave follows your usual pattern: two days a week means four days off, not ten.

It is still unpaid. Vicki Robinson, chief executive of Miscarriage UK, welcomed the two weeks and the fact that partners are named. She also said the charity still believes the leave should be paid, and will keep saying so through its Leave for Every Loss campaign. In Northern Ireland, parents who have a miscarriage have had two weeks of paid leave since 6 April. Employment law there is devolved. Great Britain has chosen a floor without the pay.

More than 1,900 people answered the consultation. Most wanted immediate family on the list. Fewer wanted grandparents, or a friend, or the person whose title does not matter because they were the one who showed up. The government kept to relationships it says employers can understand. It also wrote, in the response, that grief is not limited to that list, and that a decent employer should go further.

If you need to talk about a pregnancy loss, Miscarriage UK's support line is 0303 003 6464.