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Dept of Trade and Industry

Answer

Ms Kelly: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how the Government plan to take forward paid paternity leave as announced in the Budget. [160588] Mrs. Humble: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how the Government plan to take forward the paid adoption leave announced in the Budget. [160587] Mr. Byers: The Budget announced that paid paternity leave and adoption leave would be introduced in 2003. These were based on options put forward in the Green Paper "Work and Parents, Competitiveness and Choice". The introduction of systems for paid paternity leave and paid adoption leave will be a step forward in meeting the Government's aim to improve choice for parents and enhance competitiveness for business. Paid paternity leave will give working fathers the choice to support their partner around the birth of their child and help adapt to the responsibilities raising a new-born child brings. Paid adoption leave will recognise the commitment given by adoptive families by providing an adoptive parent with the opportunity of 26 weeks' leave paid at the flat rate of statutory maternity pay. In addition the Government are to provide a further 26 weeks' additional unpaid adoption leave bringing parity with the extension of unpaid maternity leave announced in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Ms Ryan) on 1 May 2001, Official Report, column 548W. Both paternity leave and adoption leave received strong support from parents, employers and their representatives in responses to the consultation and during discussions with ministers and officials. Employers and parents asked that wherever appropriate the systems should seek to mirror mothers' maternity provisions to aid consistency and simplicity. They also stressed that the systems should adopt a light-touch approach and be as simple as possible to administer. I have responded to these calls by today publishing frameworks for paid paternity leave and adoption leave based on suggestions put forward. Both frameworks include an assessment of their likely benefits and costs. The paternity leave framework particularly adopts a number of approaches asked for by employers. To be eligible for paid paternity leave fathers will have to have served a qualifying period. To ease the administration, paternity leave will have to be taken in a single block and taken within the first two months of the child's birth. And the payment mechanism will be similar to that used for SMP. The adoption leave framework builds on the existing support for adoptive parents. It will be available to those parents adopting children of up to 18 years of age and where couples adopt jointly it will be for them to choose who takes the paid adoption leave. I welcome comments on these frameworks and have placed copies of the documents in the Library of the House today.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

160588; 368 c65-6W;368 c65W

Session

2000-01

Subjects

Eligibility Parental leave Paternity leave

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk