When I took on the job of Families spokesperson in Nick Clegg’s Shadow Cabinet, I was very clear about the approach I would take. In Britain today, there is no identikit family that represents the best way to live – there are many types of families – but the key thing that often links these families are children.
Parents want to give their children the very best of start in life. But balancing the demands of a job with caring for young children is a real struggle. Getting time off work is difficult and finding quality, affordable childcare can be impossible.
Labour’s childcare system is a mess. The patchwork of government provision has left many parents missing out on what they are entitled to or unable to hold down even a part time job.
Now we are in a recession and families are harder pressed than ever before. As unemployment soars and parents lose their jobs, childcare becomes even less affordable, but without it parents will struggle to return to work or training.
That is why today Nick Clegg is unveiling our proposals which will, for the first time, provide seamless childcare support for families from the day a child is born to their first day of school.
The proposals include:
- 19 months of paid Parental Leave, replacing the current maternity and paternity leave arrangements. To get the maximum entitlement, parents will have to share the leave as no parent will be able to take more than 12 months.
- Free and flexible childcare for children aged 18 months-5 years for 20 hours per week.
It is disgraceful that in today’s Britain by the age of three, children living in poverty are often already falling behind in terms of being ready to start school. Helping all children get the best start in life is a core part of what the Liberal Democrats are about.
We want all young children to be able to attend quality pre-school education to aid their development and prepare them for formal schooling. We believe that quality preschool education can also function as quality part-time childcare which is much sought after by many parents who wish to work.
The introduction of shared parental leave would give both parents a real opportunity to take meaningful time away from work to bond with and care for a new child. Above all, it would also properly recognise the role that so many fathers want to play in raising and bonding with their children.
These proposals have a price tag, up to £3bn. As a party we are in the process of identifying £20bn of Government spending which we believe should be directed to other priorities. I believe this should be one such priority.
Since being Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spent over £3bn on the war in Iraq and has spent many billions more on bailing out banks. In terms of the whole of Government spending £3bn is a relatively small amount to direct to supporting families and children.
The Federal Policy Committee has adopted these proposals for debate at Conference in Spring (see paper with full details on the party website here). I hope you will give them your support.
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27 Comments
“19 months of paid Parental Leave, replacing the current maternity and paternity leave arrangements. To get the maximum entitlement, parents will have to share the leave as no parent will be able to take more than 12 months.”
HURRAH!!!
I think this is brilliant!
I love the swap to parental leave and requiring it to be shared in order to gain the maximum amount!
I agree with Jennie ‘Hurrah!
This will create real social mobility that tuition fees can only dream of!
Looks good, reading the PDF now.
I vote we buy Susan a drink at Spring Conf, Y/Y?
(I still say that Susan’s fringe was the most useful thing I attended in Bournemouth, and not just because I met you and LizW at it)
I did not have the time to read all of it, but I am delighted to see the committments the party is making on childcare.
The biggest challenge is to get the message across to the electorate. Are they really going to believe we are going to spend £3Billion extra at a time when there will be spending cuts elsewhere?
I think we need to clarify what we as Liberals think of the state. One of the first sentences in the document is that we are “wary” of the state, but in this case we clearly recognise that only the state can deliver on childcare. We are against the state where it centralises power and is unaccountable or unresponsive, but clearly not if it is an “enabling” state. I think the party needs to change it’s rhetoric on the state, otherwise it makes it harder for the electorate to believe us when we have excellent policies like these.
Is the parental leave to be paid, or is it at some token rate? If it is the former, who is going to pay for it? How much will it cost? Are firms likely to be able to afford it, given the pressure many firms find themselves under?
If it is the latter, then it isn’t much use.
I am sure the answers are in the paper, but if someone who has read the paper would like to tell us, that would be great.
Tim, the main yay as far as I am concerned is not the minutiae of who pays what, but the fact that it is transferrable between men and women. However, the document says that the same rights which are currently maternity rights would become parental rights. This means so many months at 90%, and so many months at SMP, as I recall.
Sounds great, but, how can 19 months parental leave plus about 4000 hours of childcare, for all under-fives, possibly cost as little as £3 billion?
On my arithmetic, £3 billion divided between Britain’s 60 million people comes to just fifty quid per person….!
Thanks Jennie. I am all in favour of transferability, and am therefore disappointed (as you may be) that only 5 of the 19 are transferable, since both parents have to take 7 months each, even if they would rather have a 6-13 split, or, dare I say it, a 18.5-0.5 split?
But if that means that all employers who currently offer 6 months full pay maternity leave (as mine does) now have to offer the same in paternity leave then it will be very expensive for the firm. There is then a risk either that the firm uses the same pot of money but now offers 3 months paid maternity and 3 months paid paternity leave (which I doubt would be more popular, or better for kids), or that the extra burden on the firm, especially at this time, leads it to go bust. Unemployment and poverty are not good for kids either.
I think that there are about 1m kids aged 18mo-3 who would get state funding for 20 hours nursery care for the first time. Assuming a 39 week year, that is 780m hours of childcare, which comes to about £3bn. So those numbers add up, but it does imply that all of the burden on extra parental leave falls on employers, or is unpaid. Both seem to me to have real disadvantages.
Finally, I am also a bit worried that we seem better at spending the £20bn that we say we are going to save than at spending it!
You don’t have to tell me that poverty isn’t good for kids, love. I’m living that dream right now.
Whatever the maths of it, the main thing is that if this was brought in, employers would have less excuse to discriminate against women of childbearing age. Or, rather, they would have to equalise discrimination between the genders, and then the men would kick up a fuss, and then something might be done about it.
Having children is a lifestyle choice which should not be subsidised by employers or the state. If you can’t provide for them, don’t have them.
The world shouldn’t stop turning for your sake because you’ve had unprotected sex.
Jennie: I know that reality from the other side – my family were poor when I was a kid. That it is still the reality for so many is dreadful. I am not sure that this measure would remove discrimination against people of childbearing age, however. After all, the leave can still be split 12:7, and probably will be in the main. In addition, if the parent who takes a day off work when the kid is ill is primarily the mother, if the parent who goes home on the dot every day to pick the kid up from nursery/school/childminder etc is primarily the mother, then employers are going to be less keen to hire women of childbearing age. If both parents get lots more rights, then employers may prefer people not of childbearing age. Until the state puts its money where its mouth is, and subsidises the employment of women of childbearing age, I don’t see any reason for employers’ behaviour to change.
David Brough should realise that the reason for subsidising children is children, not parents.
That’s the reason we have so many children growing up with unfit parents, without any aspiration, having the welfare state as a surrogate parent.
What future do they have, realistically?
You think you’re being nice and caring but you’re causing damage.
David Brough – “Having children is a lifestyle choice which should not be subsidised by employers or the state.”
So – taking it to the logical extreme, if no-one could afford to have children, there would be no more children.
So who, exactly, will be providing the medical care, and working to create the value in the companies that pay pensions, to all the old people populating the country at that time?
Believe me – the childless get a very good deal from the current state of affairs. If you won’t give me a tax break now, then my children won’t be changing your incontinence pads and working to pay your pension in the future.
Tim,
From memory, the £3bn is the net cost as we are looking at linking some specific savings to the policy.
The figures are also based on a less than 100% take up as both the leave and childcare elements would not be compulsory on the parents and we would not expect all parents to want to put their children into 20 hours per week of childcare at that age.
All the parental leave would be funded in a similar way to current maternity leave.
Personally, particularly as a father of three children myself, I think this is brilliant policy overall.
On the point about discrimination, I think the policy would be a good step towards reducing discrimination towards women in the workplace, but far from a complete solution to it.
We have endless welfare dependents who refuse to work. Admittedly they aren’t good for much, but if they had some form of job we wouldn’t be relying on immigration to fill unskilled positions.
David Brough: Yes, that’s what the BNP say, and it’s partly true, but it’s also totally meaningless. It’s equally true that we wouldn’t have an energy crisis if we could burn water. And it’s an equally unhelpful remark to make!
Liberal Neil: “All the parental leave would be funded in a similar way to current maternity leave”. Isn’t that the problem? The state only pays for the first 6 weeks (and about £120 for the next chunk), so our policy means that employers currently offering women 6 months off on full pay either have to cut that and offer 3 months to men and three months to women (to be equal, and we would prevent them swapping that back to 6 months for the mother even if they think that is best for their family because we are not that liberal), or offer both 6 months each, but at a cost to the firm. Are we sure that that is actually progress?
I also doubt the reception to this policy will be as strong when we make it clear that people will have the right to 6 weeks off paid, and then a long period at £120 a week. Would you have taken that?
Tim: In an ideal world we would clearly love to reimbourse employers offering such generous schemes – but clearly this would be a huge financial commitment which would, in the main benefit, higher earners who would be reimboursed at a higher rate. Research shows that women on low incomes take maternity leave to the extent to which it is paid (currently 9 months but the government is committed to increasing this to 12 months by 2010) and that higher earning women take the leave until they lose their job protection – some people simply have to live on £117.18 per week.
Annie: your post is correct. But I wonder how many of the men in couples where the women takes £117.18 a week would choose to have two people on £117.18 a week? It is one thing to live on one income plus £117, quite another to live on two lots of £117.
Nor does your comment address my point that employers that currently offer good maternity benefits are going to have to make a choice: half the maternity benefits in order to pay for the paternity benefits, or double the cost of providing parental benefits by offering dads the same terms as mums. (In fact the cost is more than double, as dads generally earn more than mums).
Do we think it is sensible at a time when many firms are struggling to more than double the cost of parental leave? It is really not obvious to me that this is sensible, particularly as we enter a reasonably serious downturn.
Second, do we think it is sensible to take the risk that employers will, for financial reasons, choose to cut maternity pay or the duration of paid maternity leave in half, in order to cover the cost of paid paternity leave? Again, it is not obvious to me that this is a family friendly policy.
Hence I am not convinced that this policy is an attractive one, although I can see that a misperception of it (lots of paid leave) would be popular with people who think it is possible to get something for nothing.
Tim, the point is that it doesn’t HAVE to be the woman who is off work any more. When I had my little one, I *HAD* to take the maternity leave, and both I and my then partner would have much preferred it to be the other way around. It drove me BONKERS. Should Mat and I have spawns, I’d like to at least have the option of him staying at home while I go back to work; this is, after all, what we both want.
Tim,
Most employers offer nothing more than the state requirement. I guess that would be split between the two parents.
Those employers who currently offer more than the statutory requirements for maternity leave are making a rational business decision. They have decided in order to attract the best female work force in the first place and encourage them to stay so that they don’t go and work for their competitor they have to offer them enhanced benefits. It’s a business decision, if there wasn’t shareholder value in it, they wouldn’t do it.
If leave can be split, so that it becomes parental leave, then companies who want to attract good people would have to make the same sorts of decision. Does shareholder value erode because they are not offering enhanced parental leave packages to men? To start with it may not, as men won’t be expecting it; but as more and more men want to take up their parental leave entitlement then they will start to judge an employer on what sort of parental leave benefits they provide (just like women who can, currently do). Just like company car and private health care or a bonus.
If they want to attract the best people, including those of child bearing/conceiving age, they will have to offer incentives.
If it is largely women who continue to take the lions share of parental leave then they will be in no different position that they would be now (bearing in mind that maternity leave is going to be increased anyway).
If men start to take more parental leave then it will just mean that there will be no point discriminating against women of childbearing age. I think this will make things easier for employers as they no longer have to have the nagging concern about women of child bearing age when making employment decisions.
It’s true that male parents will become equally as financially unattractive to employers as female parents currently are but I suspect that they will find it harder to discriminate against all parents.
In fact, because men never move out of child conceiving age the least likely to be discriminated against will be older women!
This policy is going to engender and require a whole new way of thinking about child care responsibilities and I think in time your assumptions about who are the most likely to take up the balance/majority of the parental leave allowance will be eroded. If you read the policy paper, you will see evidence that, already, 46% of Dads are unhappy with their work life balance. In Sweden dedicated paternal leave has resulted in 80% of fathers now taking leave – when the leave was unspecific (i.e. could all be taken by the mother) then only 50% of fathers took it.
The cultural norm of a father going out to work and mother staying at home to look after children is a strong one, but, one that I think, given half a chance, fathers will be willing to challenge. It will be better for fathers, better for the children and better for mothers!! And even better for those of us who don’t have children but who suffer a pay gap of around 30% (that’s the gender pay gap in the City of London) because we might have children one day.
Jennie: I strongly support all leave being transferable. I would go further, and say that all of the leave should be transferable, rather than the state saying that 7 months cannot be transfers. The policy group (and Jo C-S) are not so liberal, and think that the state should not allow couples to decide how to run their lives. But the party has always been a broad church, and so be it.
Jo is right that some employers will want to attract people by offering good terms and conditions – a big minority of firms offer paid maternity leave (almost all the public sector and most big plcs) for exactly that reason. But allowing firms to do so if they think it is a good recruitment tool is very different to saying that all firms have to do it. After all, some firms offer salaries of £50k+, but it would not make sense to say that all firms should have to, on the grounds that then they will attract better staff. If we require maternity and paternity leave to be equal, then we raise the costs to employers. It might be worth doing that, but to deny that it is raising the costs is wishful thinking.
… or I could just let Jo comment for me. Because that was everything I wanted to say but wasn’t getting out. In SENSE and everything.
Tim, if there is a possibility of someone else staying at home with a spawn, I’ll be back at work within a week. Nobody is saying that you HAVE to take seven months, only that 12 months is the maximum for any one person.
Tim,
OK, currently women get 6 weeks maternity leave at 90% and then the rest at about £120.
Under this new policy I do not expect there to be any more than 6 weeks at £90. As this could be split between the mother and father. so they could have 3 weeks each, or one could have 4 weeks and the other 2; however they want to split it. There would still only be six weeks of paid parental leave per child. What an employer won’t know is whether it will be the mother or the father who will take it. But employers will not be paying any more out.
Secondly, nobody is requiring those employers who pay more than the statutory requirements to do anything! Obviously, otherwise it would be statutory, wouldn’t it?
The restriction that no one parent can have more than 12 months off is protection for employers from too much upheaval. I suspect that it’s also got something to do with employment contracts for the cover – although I’m not an expert in that.
I suspect that it has nothing to do with telling parents how to bring up their children and illiberalism! I mean really, does everything that might challenge the inequality that exists between men and women really have to accused of being illiberal at every point?
Employers have a very real problem now with women taking their maternity entitlement and then not returning to the company they work for. Surely this more flexible system should ease that a little for them? One of the main reasons that women do not return is because they are “fearful” about leaving their child with a “stranger”. If the father of the child could take over the childcare for a while, the mother will be reassured and enjoy her return to work more. It’s got to be better for recruitment and retention of employees if you can be sure they are at least coming back.