Reform UK has published proposals for a 'Women and Motherhood Protection Act' that would codify existing maternity rights and extend the limitation period for pregnancy and maternity-related unfair dismissal claims from the current three months to 12 months — a notable procedural change for claimants who frequently miss the existing window while still on leave or in the immediate postpartum period.

The TUC wasted no time. It characterised the proposals as a "shameless and deceptive" attempt to draw attention away from a wider Reform policy platform the union federation argues would materially reduce women's employment protections. The TUC did not specify which Reform policies it considers most damaging in that framing, but the broader context has been building for weeks.

In early June, leaders of the TUC, GMB, Unite, and Unison jointly rebuffed an invitation from Nigel Farage to affiliate with Reform UK — a significant collective rejection given the party's stated ambitions to position itself as a vehicle for working-class voters disenchanted with Labour. The union leaders' refusal effectively pre-empted any institutional legitimacy Reform might have drawn from labour movement alignment before the motherhood proposals were even published.

The extension of the tribunal claim window to 12 months is the most concrete and technically meaningful element of the package. Under current Employment Tribunal rules, most unfair dismissal claims must be lodged within three months of the act complained of — a threshold that disproportionately affects pregnant workers and new mothers who may be navigating dismissal, maternity leave, and the demands of a newborn simultaneously. Extending that window to 12 months would bring maternity-related claims into line with the kind of extended limitation periods seen in discrimination law in some other jurisdictions, and it addresses a structural criticism that employment lawyers and advocacy groups have raised for years.

Whether the rest of the package delivers on its framing is less clear. Pledging to "protect existing maternity rights" is, by definition, a commitment to the status quo — it is not an expansion. For an opposition party seeking to demonstrate pro-worker credentials, that distinction matters. The TUC's 'deceptive' charge lands precisely there: the headline sounds expansive, but the substance largely re-ratifies what statute already provides.

The political choreography here is legible. Reform has been climbing in national polling and is working to translate protest-vote momentum into a durable coalition that includes working-class women — a demographic that shifted significantly toward Labour in 2024 but remains contested. Presenting a 'Women and Motherhood Protection Act' signals that the party is attempting to occupy ground that has historically been Labour and union territory. The union movement's coordinated response — from the collective rebuff of the affiliation offer to the TUC's swift public condemnation — suggests organised labour views that encroachment as a live threat rather than a frivolous one.

The credibility problem for Reform is structural. Employment law and maternity protections in the UK rest on a web of statutory instruments, EU-derived rights retained post-Brexit, and tribunal jurisprudence. A party without government power cannot enact any of this; a party in government that also pursues deregulatory labour market policies — which the TUC alleges Reform does — faces an inherent tension between the two agendas. Unions have seen this architecture before: a party can champion specific rights rhetorically while simultaneously advancing measures that erode the enforcement mechanisms, collective bargaining frameworks, and legal aid access that make those rights functional.

That tension will define how the Women and Motherhood Protection Act proposal is received by the practitioners — employment solicitors, HR professionals, trade union caseworkers — who actually navigate the system on behalf of workers. For them, a 12-month limitation period for maternity claims is a genuine and welcome technical improvement if enacted. The surrounding political contest over who owns the cause is, for now, largely beside the point of whether any of it passes into law.