Changes to UK maternity and paternity laws on 3rd April 2011

By Victoria Mitchell @ Feb 16, 2011 in Employment Law
16
Feb
Maternity and paternity leave have received a great deal of press coverage over the past few months. With many issues surrounding the topic, including workplace equality and discrimination, achieving a work-life balance, and concerns about the cost to businesses during a time of economic difficulty, it is no wonder that maternity and paternity leave remains a controversial topic within employment law. 

Firstly there were the proposals, put forward by the European parliament last year, to extend maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay throughout the EU.

This was followed in January by the Government's announcement of proposals to extend paid Paternity Leave for male employees to ten months and to allow parents to divide up the female's maternity leave between them.

The changes that are coming into effect on 3rd April 2011 will see fathers being able to claim up to six months' of the mother's maternity leave, provided she returns to work. These new additional paternity leave arrangements are in addition to fathers' previous entitlement of two weeks Paternity Leave on statutory pay of £124.88 per week.

Women retain their entitlement of a year's maternity leave, which includes six weeks on ninety-percent pay and thirty-three weeks on statutory maternity pay, presently £124.88 per week.

This obviously represents a much more flexible option for parents, and may be particularly welcomed where the mother is the higher earner.

But how will these changes affect employers?

Small to medium sized businesses and their working schedules and contracts are bound to be affected by these changes, with employees being entitled to take varying periods of differing weeks paid leave.

The Government's current plans, although with the intention of primarily benefiting families, will inevitably cause problems for employers from an organisational perspective.

The employers of both parents shall have to liaise with each other in order to work out the periods of leave actually taken by each respective employee and to ensure that these rights are not being exploited.


Comments

#1 Frazer Richardson @ Mar 8, 2011

Thanks Victoria, I wasn't sure if I was the only one wondering this and if I was going down a dead end anyway! Much appreciated, it will be interesting to see what develops.

#2 Victoria Mitchell @ Mar 3, 2011

That is quite right Frazer and with the passage of time, we may well start to see this. Inevitably, however, discrimination cases will continue to predominantly be brought by females and in this case, mothers. Farleys shall continue to report on this and other developments throughout the year.

#3 Frazer Richardson @ Mar 2, 2011

A question that has sprung to my mind is the potential impact on classifying any detrimental treatment in relation to maternity leave as direct discrimination on the grounds of sex. Essentially, where previously only the mother could take this leave and therefore detrimental treatment was automatically linked to gender, now that it is possible for either the mother or father to take the leave, does it "de-link" any detrimental action from gender? Obviously the treatment could still be unfair, but may no longer unequivocally be classified as sex discrimination? With the intricacies of how the leave entitlements and transfer of portions of leave will work, the timing elements may play a part as well, but I can't get to a clear line of thought on this at the moment.

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