Paternity Leave and Pay Debate
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Olly Glover
Main Page: Olly Glover (Liberal Democrat - Didcot and Wantage)Department Debates - View all Olly Glover's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
Paternity Leave and Pay
Olly Glover Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing this important debate.
It was a pleasure to welcome to Parliament parents, children and teachers from Europa school in my constituency last week. They were all campaigning with the Dad Shift, which the hon. Member has already mentioned, for paternity leave reform. The Dad Shift is calling for dads to be given substantial time that is affordable, so that everyone can afford to take it, enabling both parents to have equality of access to such leave.
The moral and economic case for equal parental leave is clear. In countries that offer at least six weeks of paternity leave, the gender pay gap is 4% smaller and the workforce participation gap is reduced by 3.7%. That shows that supporting parental leave not only strengthens British families, but helps to grow the economy. We Liberal Democrats believe that parents should have greater flexibility and choice over how to manage work with parenting in the first months of their child’s life. Greater equality in parenting will also lead to greater equality in the workplace, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said.
With the forthcoming Budget, I very much hope that the Minister has sought opportunities to influence proceedings and to look for opportunities to improve parental leave. In the longer term, when the public finances allow, our ambition in the Liberal Democrats is to give all families six weeks of “use it or lose it” leave for each parent, paid at 90% of earnings, and 46 weeks of parental leave to share between them as they choose, paid at double the existing statutory rate. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.