Draft Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 General Committees

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The birth of a child, and their early years, are crucial periods for the child and their development. They are special and very important for parents to be involved in. Parental leave is crucial to making this period a smoother, healthier and more beneficial time for parents and newborns alike. I welcome these reforms, which make parental leave more flexible and thereby open up the opportunity for increased parental involvement in the child’s first year. These changes are a step in the right direction, and we will not stand in the way of measures that facilitate greater take-up of important workers’ rights, particularly those that will help more women to return to work after having a child.

The current paternity leave system is too rigid: leave must be taken in one block of no more than two consecutive weeks within a period of eight weeks after the child’s birth and the employer must be notified 14 weeks beforehand. We will all be familiar with cases in our families and constituencies of how that can be a barrier to parents, particularly fathers and partners, who want to take that leave. It is limiting for them, and I am glad that these changes will go some way towards making improvements.

Although I welcome these changes, I still have concerns that this will not go far enough to meet the stated aims of the policy in the impact assessment, which is to allow

“more fathers/partners to play a greater role in caring for their children”.

It is a shame that this opportunity has not been used to reform the failed shared parental leave system. In October 2020, the Women’s Budget Group commission on a gender-equal economy noted:

“At the root of women’s disadvantage in the labour market is inequality in unpaid work…75% of mothers face pregnancy or maternity-related discrimination”

Along with many other campaign groups, it has reiterated the need for implementing equal parental and caring leave policies as a crucial step in addressing this.

If the Government are committed to encouraging fathers and partners to play a more active role in lessening the burden on mothers, doing this would no doubt have a greater impact. Take-up of shared parental leave is measured in two ways: as the proportion of eligible fathers who take a shared parental leave each year, or as the proportion of new mothers starting statutory paid maternity leave each year who used the shared parental leave scheme to transfer some of that paid leave to the child’s father. The second method is more meaningful because the size of the pool of eligible fathers is unknown. According to Maternity Action, in 2021 and 2022, only 2% of mothers used shared parental leave to transfer leave to a partner. That figure shows that shared parental leave is not reducing the domestic burden on women. It is not helping women to return to the workplace, and it continues to restrict the involvement of fathers and partners in this crucial time in their child’s life. The Government’s consultation on shared parental leave concluded that the system was found to be “too complicated” for many respondents to use and there was a lack of awareness about the available leave. Despite receiving that report, the Government stated:

“We are not proposing any changes to shared parental leave or unpaid parental leave at this time.”

Can the Minister explain why the Government refuse to take further action to reform shared parental leave?

Today’s changes in the policy area stem from the 2019 Conservative party manifesto, which committed to

“look at ways to make it easier for fathers to take paternity leave.”

It is only now, five years later and just before another general election, that that manifesto pledge is being looked at. The consultation took place in 2019 and the response was published in June 2023. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why there was such a long delay, which has meant that we have not seen the benefits of the changes that could have happened sooner. The delays to this crucial legislation speak to a wider context in which the Government have not prioritised the importance of addressing workers’ rights.

The Minister has a great track record of being persistent on issues for which he has responsibility. I hope that he will speak to his colleagues to ensure that we continue to build on what has been announced and done today to address the wider issues affecting parental leave and the discrimination faced, particularly by women, and make the much-needed reforms to ensure that shared parental leave in practice derives the benefits that are desperately needed for parents.