25 Jan 2011
Flexible family leave provisions
As the long awaited additional paternity leave rights finally come to the fore, Nick Clegg has been outlining his vision of family leave for the future. Brenda Msi-Manzini, associate in Lawrence Graham's Employment and Pensions Group, commented:
"The deputy prime minister recently informed the Demos think-tank that his view was that the current leave provisions were Edwardian. He went on to say that they marginalise fathers and place all childcare responsibility on the mother. Mr Clegg outlined a few ideas that, in his opinion, would make family leave more flexible and therefore better".
"One such option was to allow the parents to share the overall leave allowance, both the paid and unpaid, between them in either one big block or in lots of chunks. This means that there is a possibility that employers will have to plan for employees taking maternity leave is bite sized chunks. Instead of a solid block, there may be three blocks of eight weeks in-between which the employee returns to work for the equivalent time. How are employers going to deal with this type of upheaval? How will benefits, including pensions, be dealt with when the employee enters an unpaid period, or will the entire leave period become paid?"
"Another suggestion, by Mr Clegg, was to allow third parties such as grandparents and close family friends to take leave as well. Again, how can this be helpful? It is understandable that grandparents may be heavily involved in a grandchild's upbringing, but close family friends? How do you judge who is a close family friend? These suggestions will have a significant impact on benefits and pensions for employers."
Mr Clegg announced that there will be a consultation on these suggestions starting in the next few weeks.