Jo Swinson was eight months pregnant when she announced plans for shared parental leave to revolutionise the lives of parents at home and at work. The moment her “baby in government” came into force in 2015 was emotional, she told the Guardian.
Little wonder, then, that she stops short of calling the policy a failure. It is difficult to be brutally honest about your offspring. And shared parental leave was, as she says, a first step. Thousands of families have been able to share leave as a result of the measures she helped usher in, and their lives have been changed for the better.
But despite its promise and the best intentions of those that brought it forward, shared parental leave (SPL) was not just a missed opportunity, but a monumental dud of a policy.
Ten years since its inception, only about 5% of eligible men and 1% of eligible women use it. Freedom of information requests made by the Guardian to four of the UK’s biggest public sector employers show that just 1.55% of parental leave requests made in the last five years were for SPL. According to the last government’s assessment of the policy in 2023, 45% of fathers had not heard of the policy at all.
Why? Mainly because SPL – which gives parents the right to split up to 52 weeks’ leave, including up to 39 weeks of statutory shared parental pay – doesn’t make financial sense for most families. Many companies (who are still moving faster than the government) offer enhanced pay for mothers, but not fathers.
Families with fathers or partners who take SPL often have to take a big financial hit. It is fiendishly complicated, and even most HR professionals have little idea how it works. Dads also have no specific allocated leave, no days they can say are “theirs”. Given the cost and the hassle, is it any wonder most couples swerve?
Unlike other failing policies that are reforged and rebuilt to improve effectiveness, SPL has been left to languish. A built-in bias towards richer couples has only compounded over the years. Last year, a full 95% of SPL was taken by dads in the top half of earners, according to the Dad Shift. The proportion of middle and low earners taking SPL has dropped every year since the policy’s inception.
In fact, the existence of SPL has arguably made things worse for families, by providing a fig leaf to pathetically low paternity pay in the UK. Dads and non-birthing partners get two weeks on the minimum wage. That is the worst statutory paternity leave in Europe and ranks 40th out of 43 OECD countries. Taking those precious two weeks costs someone earning the average wage over £1,000. Is it any wonder a third of fathers don’t take any leave at all?
There are some glimmers of hope. In July, the government announced an 18-month review of parental leave. The employment rights bill gives workers the right to paternity leave and parental leave from day one (although, crucially, not the right to pay until later down the line). But, most importantly, a campaign supported by longtime female stalwarts but driven by dads is gathering momentum.
MPs – both male and female – are calling for better-paid leave for dads, with many supporting at least a month of paid leave reserved for fathers and co-parents. Equality campaigners like the Fatherhood Institute, Pregnant then Screwed and the Fawcett Society have long argued that a levelling of the domestic field is vital for tackling entrenched gender equalities that leave women more likely to be impoverished, worse paid and with smaller pensions (all while they do more unpaid work).
Does this matter? Yes. The benefits of both parents taking time out to spend time with their babies is well documented. Dads who take leave with their babies build stronger bonds with their children and their partners – unsurprisingly this makes them all happier. Evidence suggests it also shrinks the gender pay gap, and could add, by some estimates, £2.6bn to the economy.
There has been a lost decade of progress on shared parental leave; parents of the future will hope that change is finally on the way.
