The Work and Families Bill provides the power to introduce measures intended to give more choice to families trying to balance work and caring responsibilities.
Statutory Maternity and Adoption Pay and Leave
The period of statutory maternity pay will be extended from six to nine months for employees with an expected week of childbirth on or after 1 April 2007. The extension to 39 weeks is a step towards the Government's ultimate goal of one year's maternity pay for all new working mothers. In addition, there will be no qualifying period of employment necessary for an employee to be entitled to additional maternity leave.
Further measures include:
The legislation will remove the small employers' exemption in order to clarify that an employee has the right to return to the same or a similar job regardless of the size of the organization.
The changes made to the maternity leave regulations will be mirrored in the case of adoption leave for parents of children expected to be placed for adoption on or after 1 April 2007.
Paternity Leave
Measures include the introduction of new paternity leave for fathers or the partners of adopters, enabling them to benefit from leave and statutory pay during the first year of their child's life if the mother has decided to return to work.
Flexible Working
The existing provisions, which apply to parents of young and disabled children, will be amended to extend the right to request flexible working arrangements to those with caring responsibilities for adult relatives. The revised flexible working regulations will apply from April 2007.
Says Dean Parnell, "It is as yet unclear how some of these proposed measures will work in practice. For example, how is an employer faced with a request from a male employee for paternity leave, to be taken in place of the maternity leave allowance not being used by the mother of the child, expected to verify the facts?"
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