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Currently new fathers get only 2 weeks of paternity leave at statutory minimum pay, obviously this is better than nothing, but this level of pay isn't exactly a great incentive at a time when a family probably needs as much money as possible. It's clear that something needs to change to give fathers a realistic opportunity to spend time with their new or expanded family.

With this in mind news of a proposed government shake up of Paternity and Maternity pay could be expected to be met with some excitement. Unfortunately that's not the case as it falls well short of fixing the financial problem mentioned above. The proposed system would allow a mother to transfer part or all of the last 6 months of maternity leave to the father so that she could go back into work, and the father could stay at home with the family receiving statutory minimum payment for the first 3 months

Ignoring for a moment the administrative cost to businesses and the government, how is this of real benefit to families? It offers them absolutely no additional financial support, and merely shifts the financial burden from one parent to the other. If you bring in the unfortunate wage gap that often exists between the genders, the financial burden is shifting to the parent who is statistically more likely to be earning less!

Rather than go to the cost and effort of re-arranging deck chairs as they are, a simpler and far more effective idea would just be to put the money they would have spent having to consult, launch and administer this new scheme, and instead give fathers more of a financial helping hand to spend time with their families.

A quick poll of the men in the office who have recently become fathers or are about to become fathers produced a variety of suggestions. Ideas ranging from ones similar to that mentioned above to others promoting a set number of days per month at above statutory minimum payments for a set number of months, ensuring more consistant contact with the family. As many different ideas as there were, one thing was clear and that was that the proposed plan is of little use to anyone here.

Out of curiosity we'd be interested to hear any thoughts you have on the matter of paternity pay and the proposed changes. If you want to get in touch, just get in contact below.

Hugo
18/09/2009