My Lords, the Government understand the intention behind the amendment and I am glad of the opportunity to have this short debate on the issue today. Before I respond to this specific amendment, I should like to take a moment to set out the rationale behind the introduction of shared parental leave and the importance of these changes for families. Bearing in mind the tenor of the comments made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, about brevity, I shall attempt to be brief.
The restrictions in the current maternity and paternity system are outdated and do not reflect the way in which modern families want to raise their children. They compel mothers to take the bulk of the time off and give fathers no choice but to stay at work in the early stages of their child’s life. This approach maintains the outdated perception that a mother’s place is in the home and a father’s place is at work. It is known to damage women’s career prospects, because employers expect young women to take large amounts of time out of the workplace to raise children. It can also mean that mothers feel unsupported in caring for a child, and fathers do not feel involved in their child’s upbringing.
It is right that mothers are able to take all the leave that they need to recover from birth and to bond with their new baby. However, they should be able to return to work without sacrificing the rest of their leave. This should be available to the family to use in whatever way they choose. For some families, this will mean that the father takes on the majority of the caring responsibilities very shortly after birth. For others, it will mean mixing periods of work with periods of leave to share childcare. This Bill will make this possible for the first time. The introduction of shared parental leave and pay aims to give families flexibility in how
they share childcare when they have a baby. The current arrangements are rigid and inflexible, enabling only one parent to take leave at a time and allowing parents only to “take it in turns” to care for their child.
The changes introduced by the Bill will enable parents to take leave in blocks as small as one week and will remove the restriction on parents taking leave together. The Modern Workplaces consultation, which the Government published in May 2011, set out the Government’s ambition for leave to be taken in blocks of less than a week to allow parents to take leave on a part-time basis. Unfortunately, in this instance, this worthy ambition has not been possible. I will explain why.
The UK has one of the most flexible labour markets in the world. UK employment legislation gives employers and employees freedom to agree individual contracts between themselves, without restricting them to set working hours or working patterns. Shared parental leave is flexible. It will allow parents to choose how to share it between themselves and to take leave as an individual right, in discussion with their employer. This variation in working arrangements creates a difficulty when trying to allow shared parental leave and pay to be taken in part-week blocks.
Here, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, over the mathematical calculations. One parent may have a standard working week of 37 hours a week, or 7.2 hours per day, and their partner may work 16 hours per week working two eight-hour days. Calculating the ratio of the weekly entitlement to shared parental pay that should be paid when an individual takes one day off would be complex for an employer. However, this is magnified when a parent decides to transfer their remaining part-week entitlement to their partner for them to use. It would be even harder for small businesses, without access to an HR resource, to administer. The Government are mindful that shared parental leave and pay will be an innovative system. To add into the new system the facility to take leave and pay in periods of less than a week risks creating significant additional costs and burdens for employers.
The Government instead propose to allow shared parental leave to be taken on a part-time basis, using a principle that is already well used and understood by employers. Under existing maternity leave provisions, mothers are able to return to work for 10 individual working days without ending their maternity leave or losing their entitlement to maternity pay for that week. These are called keep-in-touch, or KIT, days. The Government propose to give parents on shared parental leave additional keep-in-touch-style days to allow part-time working on shared parental leave without affecting entitlement to statutory shared parental pay. It is intended that these days will have a different name in the context of shared parental leave, which I hope addresses one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, because the intention for shared parental leave would be different from the intention for maternity leave. The name would reflect the fact that these days can be used to achieve a part-time working pattern or a staggered return from shared parental leave.
The Government are aware that some interested parties, such as the TUC, are concerned that there is no requirement on an employer to pay an employee
more than their statutory payment when they are taking a keep-in-touch day. The Government will provide guidance to employers on how to use these provisions and will strongly encourage employers to pay an employee their full contractual rate if they work on a keep–in-touch day.
The Government believe that it is important to maintain the flexibility in keep-in-touch days to allow parents to return to the workplace for short visits. The Government do not wish to discourage these sorts of visits by forcing an employer to pay an employee’s contractual rate. However, where an employee is undertaking work, it is appropriate that that employee is paid accordingly. Keep-in-touch days are entirely discretionary for both an employee and employer to use. An employer cannot insist that an employee uses a keep-in-touch day and an employee cannot insist that their employer allows them to work part-time by using a keep-in-touch day.
As I have mentioned, shared parental leave and pay is an innovative system and will need time to bed down. It is right that proposals for leave and pay to be taken in periods of less than a week should be considered alongside any review of the shared parental leave system. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked why we do not take powers in the Bill to allow shared parental leave to be taken on a part-time basis, to be set out, in effect, in regulation. The Government are sympathetic to this proposal but without a clear policy to enable the shared parental leave to be taken part-time, regulations cannot be designed at this time. My department has explored this fully and will continue to consider it as part of the review of shared parental leave
I hope that reassures the noble Baroness that the Government share her ambition and I ask her to withdraw her amendment.