New rules on parental leave (expected to come into force in April 2015)

From 2015, the Children and Families Bill will bring the rules for statutory adoption leave and pay more closely into line with the rules for claiming statutory maternity leave and pay. In particular, there is to be no qualifying service requirement for adoption leave and the first six weeks of statutory adoption pay is to be set at 90% of the adopting parent’s pay, instead of a flat rate.

The Bill will also allow a woman to end her maternity leave early, converting the remainder of the leave into Shared Parental Leave, which either parent can take.

The aim of the reforms is to introduce greater flexibility for working parents and to encourage fathers to be more involved with their children right from their early life.

The rules give a woman the right to take her full 52 weeks of maternity leave.

Only if she decides to give up that right and to share her leave will the new rules on shared parental leave kick in.

The TUC was concerned at initial proposals which envisaged scrapping the woman’s right to maternity leave altogether and opening up the whole 52-week period to sharing between parents.

This carried two clear risks. The first was that women would find themselves under pressure to return to work too soon, and the second was that employers would seek to open up well-established collective maternity benefits and re-negotiate them to avoid allegations of sex discrimination against men. These risks, says the TUC, have now largely receded.

The key features of the new rules are as follows:

• a woman must take the first two weeks’ compulsory maternity leave following birth. She can choose whether to share the balance of her leave;

• a woman who wants to opt into shared parental leave must give at least eight weeks’ binding notice to bring her maternity leave to an end. That notice can be given at any stage, including before the birth. However, to allow her to change her mind after the birth, there will be a window of up to six weeks after the birth to withdraw the notice;

• at the same time as giving notice of their eligibility and intention to take shared parental leave, parents will be expected to provide a non-binding indication of their intended leave pattern;

• in addition, employees will need to give eight weeks’ notice of their intention to take specific periods of leave;

• the number of requests for shared parental leave (or changes to leave) will be capped at three. However, this will not prevent voluntary arrangements agreed with the employer;

• employers will be given some ability under the rules to veto the proposed pattern of leave and to insist on it being in one continuous block;

• each parent is to have 20 “KIT-style” (“keep-in-touch”) days, in addition to the 10 days available to a woman on maternity leave, to keep in touch with the workplace;

• parents can both take the leave at the same time if they want to;

• parents will be able to take shared parental leave until the child’s first birthday; and

• the right to return to the same job will only be available where the total amount of leave taken by that employee, even if taken in discontinuous chunks, adds up to 26 weeks or less.

However, the TUC warns that unless the leave is backed up with better pay, many couples will be unable to take advantage of the new rights.

The government’s own estimates show that just one in 20 fathers will be able to afford to take shared parental leave if it is paid at the current statutory rate.

A TUC analysis of take-up rates for Additional Paternity Pay (APP), showed that just one in 172 fathers (1,650 fathers across the whole of the UK) took Additional Paternity Leave in 2012-13, an incredibly low rate which the TUC blames squarely on lack of pay.

As with other employment rights, these rights will only be able to be enforced in the employment tribunal on payment of the relevant fee or remission (see page 40).