Clause 1 - Paternity leave
Employment Bill
5:45 pm
Mr Alan Johnson (Minister of State (Employment and the Regions), Department of Trade and Industry; Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Labour)
As I understand it, the amendment suggests that an employee should be required to produce evidence of his entitlement to paternity leave, although the hon. Gentleman took it a bit wider than that. I assure him that we have talked about this long and hard. It is unlikely that a huge problem will be caused by people seeking to get paternity leave just for the joy of having a couple of weeks off on £100 a week. That is, nevertheless, something that we have considered carefully. When we examined the details of paternity leave, we tried to stick as closely as we could to the maternity leave provisions.
With regard to maternity leave, it is certain that there is proof in advance of the fifteenth week before the woman expects to have her child. There is also form MATB 1, which is issued to a mother by her midwife. It can act as proof of her condition, and it can be shown to an employer.
Paternity leave is less clear cut, and it is especially unclear before the birth of a child. We want fathers to give proper advance notice to their employer that they will be taking paternity leave, and, as I have said, that period will be 15 weeks, which will allow employers to plan ahead with certainty.
With the best will in the world, it is impossible for the employee to prove his relationship with the expected child. He can assert that he believes that he is its father, but he cannot produce firm evidence. That is an easily comprehensible issue on which the hon. Gentleman said, ''How can the father do that? It is totally impossible.'' When we consulted with employers, the one message we received over and over was that they wanted nothing to do with investigating and policing the private lives of their employees; hence the self-certification proposal. Given that there is no firm evidence of paternity short of a DNA test when the child is born, the last thing that employers want to do is to wade through evidence and take a view on whether a particular employee is or is not likely to be the father of a child.