Towards a new system of statutory maternity, paternity and parenting leave (Part 1)

By Richard Dunstan, Public Affairs Officer

In the first of a three-part series of blogs on the case for policy to support more equal parenting, Richard Dunstan looks back on two decades of policy neglect and failure, and slays a few myths about the UK’s current system of maternity, paternity and parenting leave.

?In 2003, the introduction by the then Labour government of two weeks of statutory paid paternity leave – the first such provision for new fathers in the UK – appeared to herald a long overdue revolution in parental leave policy that would lead to a more equal balance for working parents in the care of their new child, and so help tackle the discrimination against mothers that has long blighted our workplaces. And by the time the Liberal Democrat wing of the Coalition Government introduced Shared Parental Leave in 2015, more than half of UK adults?agreed ?that “childcare should be shared equally between parents”.

And with good reason. For there is ample evidence that more equal parenting – not just in the first year after the birth but throughout childhood – is good for parents, good for their child, good for their employers, and good for the economy.

International experience and a growing body of research demonstrate that more equal parenting helps new mothers return to work after maternity leave and then remain in the labour market. And that, as the Government recognises, gives “employers access to a wider pool of talent, supports economic growth, and helps narrow the gender pay gap.” Furthermore, more equal parenting would help tackle the pregnancy and maternity discrimination that is endemic in UK workplaces. What’s not to like?

However, outside government, there is near universal agreement that the Shared Parental Leave (SPL) scheme introduced in 2015 has failed to deliver the evidently popular goal of more equal parenting. Take-up is flatlining at a negligible level: of the some 400,000 new mothers who start on statutory paid maternity leave each year, just 8,000 – a mere 2% – use the SPL scheme to transfer some of that paid leave to the child’s father. And, among family rights groups and trade unions, there is widespread agreement that this chronic policy failure will not be remedied by further awareness campaigns, new online tools for parents, new guidance for employers, or tweaks to the complex and restrictive eligibility rules.

Furthermore, proposals to simply increase the length of the two-week entitlement to?paternity?leave – such as that?made by the Institute for Public Policy Research in 2014 ?and?adopted by the Labour Party ?the following year – do not address this failure of the SPL scheme, which would presumably remain in place, and would do little if anything to deliver the policy goal of enabling more equal parenting. As the Fatherhood Institute notes, “leave available to be taken by the father [when the mother is herself at home in the period immediately after the birth] does not incentivise particular parental behaviours [such as ‘solo’ parenting by the father]”.

The?only?way to properly address the chronic failure of the SPL scheme is to scrap it and start again. Which means replacing both the SPL scheme and the existing statutory maternity and paternity leave provisions with a new, more equitable system of statutory maternity, paternity and parenting leave.

In early 2018, the Government began an evaluation of the SPL scheme, and in July 2019 it launched a consultation on high-level policy options for “supporting parents and achieving equality”. But, five years on, the evaluation has yet to conclude, the Government has yet to issue its response to the 2019 consultation, and valuable research undertaken to inform the evaluation – including the 2019 Maternity & Parental Rights Survey, conducted on a 10-year cycle since the 1970s and last carried out in 2009 –?remains under wraps ?pending the conclusion of the evaluation.

Such protracted delay in concluding the evidently necessary evaluation of an important but clearly failing policy is deeply disappointing, as it precludes governmental action to address that policy failure. And we already know that, given some obvious policy and legal constraints on reform, there are few credible options for replacement of the SPL scheme.

Indeed, it is not difficult to identify a few key principles that should underpin any attempt to replace the failing SPL scheme. But first it is necessary to slay three unhelpful myths about the UK’s system of statutory maternity and other parental leave.

The first is that the UK’s system of parental leave is “generous”. Government ministers never miss an opportunity to make this fantastical claim, but a system that includes just two weeks of paid leave reserved for fathers and relies on birth mothers giving up their own paid leave for fathers to spend any more time at home cannot be described as generous. In the words of the Fatherhood Institute, we need “a father-inclusive parenting leave system”.

The second, related myth is that paid?maternity?leave in the UK is not only ‘generous,’ but is?too?long and accordingly can be cut to pay for the much-needed additional parenting leave for fathers. In fact, as is clear from the following chart, the UK’s 39 weeks of paid leave reserved for the birth mother is short by international standards, including in comparison to Sweden, which is often held up as the exemplar of more gender equal systems. So the TUC is right to say that, far from cutting back women’s hard-won rights to pay for new rights for fathers, “maternity rights must be enhanced”.

And the third myth is that, in order to tackle the pregnancy and maternity discrimination that is endemic in UK workplaces, the goal of more equal parenting requires?equalised?– that is,?identical?– paid leave entitlements for each parent. But pregnancy and childbirth are not equal endeavours on the part of each parent: fathers simply do not play an equal part in the biological and physical endeavours of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

So any new system of parenting leave, while it must introduce new rights to paid parenting leave for?fathers, must also protect women’s existing rights to time off work in late pregnancy, and to recover from the often considerable and sometimes life-threatening impact of childbirth. In any case, employers are not daft. They know full well that, whatever the legal provisions for paid parental leave, in practice the average new mother will?always?take more time off work than the average new father. Because she needs to. So the idea that equalised leave entitlements would end pregnancy and maternity discrimination is for the birds.

In our next post in this series, we’ll look at the key principles that should underpin reform.