Only 1 In 5 Fathers Take New Paternity Leave Entitlement - Bruce

11.45.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 26th Jul 2004

Only 1 in 5 fathers (19%) are taking advantage of their new right to paid paternity leave, according to official figures uncovered by Malcolm Bruce MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary.

Since April 2003, new fathers have been entitled to claim two weeks' paid paternity leave at a rate of £100 a week or 90% of their weekly wage, whichever is lower. The Government estimated that 400,000 employed fathers would be eligible for paternity leave each year. They budgeted for only 70% (280,000) taking up the two-week entitlement.

New figures released to Malcolm Bruce MP reveal that only 79,210 fathers (19% of those eligible) have claimed statutory paternity pay in 2003/2004.

Commenting, Malcolm Bruce said: "The low take-up of paid paternity leave indicates that some men are still influenced by our 'macho' culture. 1950s Britain is clearly still alive and well. The cultural revolution and sexual equality of the 1960s, which the Prime Minister recently derided, seems to have passed many by.

"It may be that men don't want to take time off work to help look after their newborn baby because they're worried what their male colleagues will think. Worse, they may be afraid their boss will hold it against them.

"The right to paid paternity leave will remain an empty victory for fathers as long as cultural norms dictate that duty to their jobs overrides that to their families."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Fathers of babies born on or after 6 April 2003 qualify for a new right to two weeks' paternity leave, paid at a rate of £100 a week or 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

Employer returns to the Inland Revenue show the number of men receiving Statutory Paternity Pay. Employers must specify how much statutory paternity pay they have paid to their employees in their returns. These returns were due on 19 May 2004.

In response to a PQ by Malcolm Bruce MP (Hansard, 14 Jul 2004 : Column 1147W), the DTI released information supplied by the Inland Revenue on the take-up of statutory paternity pay (SPP) since April 2003.

The Inland Revenue take samples of the data during the return process. This is done by taking a 3% sample of all the returns submitted.

As at 02.07.04 the Inland Revenue had processed approximately 54% of the total number of returns expected for 2003/4.

Using this sample (3% of 54% of the total returns expected) the Inland Revenue have derived a 'very approximate' estimate of the numbers of persons in receipt of each payment and of the amounts paid to them for the full year:

Number of persons claiming SPP: 79,210

Total amount paid to them: £16,350,117

The Regulatory Impact Assessment

(http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/individual/workparents_ria.pdf>) accompanying the new entitlement estimated that "take-up will be high but less than 100%". According to the RIA estimates, 400,000 employed fathers each year would be eligible for paternity leave, and that most would take some time off. For costing purposes, the DTI assumed that there would be a 70% take-up of the two week entitlement (equivalent to 60% take-up of two weeks and 20% take-up of one week), or 280,000:

Total Government payments would be £57 million pa. As many fathers already receive paid paternity leave, they would not all feel any benefit from the change. In these cases, it would be their employers who would benefit as they would be able to reclaim some of their expenditure. The estimate is that, of the £57 million, employees would gain £40 million and employers would gain and £17 million.

The total additional costs to employers were summarised as:

Policy costs (covering for absences): £23-39m (recurring)

Implementation costs (administration): £10m (one-off) and £7-13m (recurring).