Clause 3 - Additional paternity leave: adoption
Work and Families Bill
12:00 pm
Norman Lamb (Shadow Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, Trade & Industry; North Norfolk, Liberal Democrat)
I am sure that the hon. Lady will not want me to say it, but the amendment seems to be intended to introduce the same sort of flexibility that I was aiming for in my amendments. I support her aim of eliciting elucidation, as I think she put it. There should be flexibility for mothers and fathers to make the relevant judgments themselves, rather than having a straitjacket placed on them. Despite the pay gap that, as I pointed out, sadly still exists, there are, none the less, many households where the woman earns more money, or is in a more responsible and more onerous job than the father. There may be many circumstances in which it suits that household for the woman to return early to work and hand over to the father.
The Bill seems to introduce a real block by requiring that if the woman of a household has very good personal reasons for wanting to return to work after, say, three months, a period of another three months would have to intervene in which another carer would look after the child, before the father could take his entitlement to paternity leave. I am sure that the Government would want to avoid that consequence. It does not seem a good approach to the care of the child to have the mother caring for him or her for three months, a carer for the second three months, and the father thereafter. We should all try to avoid that outcome.
I should have thought that, given that the sharing of maternity and paternity leave—the substitution that the Bill provides for—introduces a complexity that employers will have to deal with at some stage in any case, it would make no difference if they had to deal with that task after three months rather than after seven or eight, or whatever period would need to be clocked up under the Bill and the expected regulations. As the hon. Lady said, the signs are that the regulations would provide for the right to paternity leave only after six months.
The Bill should provide the flexibility to facilitate matters for those households in which, for good reasons, the choice is made for the mother to return to work earlier and the father to take over. At the moment, the impression we get from the Government is that that flexibility would be blocked.