Good afternoon. Welcome to the Women and Equalities Committee, looking into shared parental leave. We are taking up where we left off before there were a number of votes last week. I am pleased to welcome back Jonny Briggs, the inclusion and resourcing director for Aviva; Claire McCartney, policy and practice manager from the CIPD; and Nikki Pound, women’s equality policy officer at the TUC. Thank you very much for your patience. We will pick up where we left off.

It is lovely to see you again. When we left off last time, Claire was answering a question. We were talking about what the key barriers are to promotion and take-up of SPL among parents working for smaller and private sector employers.

I had probably just finished what I was going to say.

I did not really have anything else to add. It is not an area that I have expertise in; I am probably here more to talk about what we do at Aviva. Sorry, I will see if Nikki has anything she wants to add. You have pinned me. I do not know if that is intentional. If everybody does not want to look at me, you could find a way to unpin. I am very happy with whatever way you want to work it; I am just terrified for you having to look at me on a big screen when there are two other people for you to look at.

I touched a little last week on how, obviously, smaller employers—particularly in the private sector—are less likely to be unionised. I set out last week some of the advances that unions working with employers had made in terms of getting enhanced policies, particularly around pay and length of leave, and day one rights to that leave. One of the biggest barriers for smaller employers, where they might not be in a position to offer enhanced policies, is the low statutory remuneration and the statutory entitlements. That obviously makes it a huge barrier for them. There is also the complexity of the system, which we have discussed quite a bit. It is a challenge for everyone to navigate, especially if you have limited resources in terms of your HR and personnel teams. We have definitely had experiences where we have had reps saying that when requests for shared parental leave and stuff are turned down, or when it has been a difficult conversation, it is not always because the employer does not want to do it. It is because there is a real complexity to the system, and people just genuinely do not know who is entitled and how to administer that. Particularly having an individual right for each parent would help a little with that, because with shared parental leave you obviously have to potentially liaise with another employer, because it is the maternal transfer model. That adds another layer of complexity to navigate, which I imagine would be very challenging for smaller employers that do not have the big resource teams to administer that.

Nikki, while you are on, as it were, I will follow up with a question that I know Claire answered last time but you did not get the chance to, which was: should the Government consider introducing a streamlined process or an online platform? Have you had any thoughts about how the administrative burden might be eased?

Yes, streamlining the process would be good. Fundamentally, regarding the shared parental leave system in particular, an individual right for each parent would be really helpful in just making clear who is entitled to what and how that works. We know there are minimum earnings thresholds, and there is obviously whether it is a day one right; it is not, but if it were. Some of those eligibility criteria, again, would just make the system less complex, and that would help naturally to streamline the process. It is about fundamental reform as well as supporting with clear materials, which I know a lot of organisations do, including the CIPD and stuff. The system itself—as we have all discussed—is incredibly complicated, even for trade union reps who are supporting people in the workplace and for those of us sitting around here today talking about the system. That needs to be addressed fundamentally.

Apologies for being late. Do you agree that some form of shared parental leave should be maintained within the statutory system because it is the only element that offers significant flexibility to parents? Nikki, I am happy if you want to answer that one first.

Yes, absolutely. We definitely agree. There needs to be some form of shared parental leave in addition to maternity, paternity, or adoption leave. We need a system that offers families real choice and flexibility. That is really essential to driving gender equality, for the longer-term benefits for families of sharing those responsibilities more equitably, and for the economy more broadly. When I was preparing for this, I was reading a report from the Women’s Budget Group that it did jointly with the Centre for Economic Strategies last year. It found that the cost of the barriers to paid work encountered by women, which are not all related to just parental rights—there are broader caring responsibilities, there is flexible working, there are lots of other things to it—was worth £95 billion a year to the economy. There is a huge economic argument here for ensuring that the parental leave system, along with other things, really works to support women to participate in the economy and in the workplace. The Government’s own evaluation of shared parental leave has found that the families who were able to take it strongly agreed that the system had given them flexibility in how they share parenting. As we have discussed and as that evaluation found, the problem is that such a small proportion of families are able to use the system as it currently is. It is about 1% for mothers and 5% for fathers, from the Government’s own evaluation. Without reform, it is unlikely that it can drive the changes that we want to see. We know from countries where they have schemes that are simpler, better remunerated, and have that individual right to leave and pay for both parents that take-up and outcomes have been more positive. It is absolutely fundamental that we have a system that supports families going forward.

We would recommend certainly retaining, but as Nikki said, also reforming, both shared parental leave and paternity leave to provide greater choice for working parents in different circumstances. The Department for Business and Trade’s 2023 evaluation report showed—as we have discussed—that for the relatively small number of parents who took up SPL, there were real benefits. Those included greater choice and flexibility of how they share their parenting responsibilities in the first year, fathers’ ability to spend time with and bond with their child, and mothers being enabled to go back to work earlier and to their previous role, which is helpful. Time at home also led to personal growth and development. There are benefits of shared parental leave, but we need revisions to the system. As Nikki said, we would also like to see that protected entitlement to parental leave at six weeks, at or near the full rate of pay. That combination would be really helpful and give more choice and flexibility to working parents. Hopefully, it would encourage more fathers and partners to take up parental leave, which is what we want to support. It would lead to greater labour market participation and greater gender equality overall.

While you are on the screen, we have heard quite a bit that the requirement of eight weeks’ notice to change blocks of shared parental leave is onerous on parents and incompatible with the reality of parenting. Why do you think employers need eight weeks’ notice?

For us, this is something that we would need to consult with our members on to gain a better understanding of needs around notice periods and ensure that employers are able to get cover for parents taking the leave. However, eight weeks seems like a substantial period of time, and there might well be opportunities to reduce this to better support parents’ needs. For larger organisations, it is also worth flagging research that was done by the Equal Parenting Project of good practice employers. It showed that when significant periods of shared parental leave were agreed, internal secondments were set up—particularly for senior roles—and this was a real opportunity for development and inclusion within the business. In general, it would be something that we would need to consult with our members more broadly on to try to really understand the needs around that notice period.

Jonny, do you think that a reduced notice period would be proportionate and feasible in these arrangements?

I completely understand why the firms are saying eight weeks because it allows them to plan, but then, as you say, the question implies there is a balance between that and parenting. What we do is that if somebody is moving, we have a four-week internal notice period. I can see the eight weeks being very advantageous for the organisation because you need to plan, and if somebody is going off, you do not want that to affect the organisation. To me, just as an opinion, eight weeks seems a bit too far, a bit too long. We can generally make it work from four weeks, albeit I would call out that we certainly have some exceptions.

I would just like to remind you from the session last week that everybody is entitled to the full 26 weeks. That has been the case for seven years, so we have some good data. As everything does, it fluctuates, but 100% of women take six months. In actual fact, the average women take is 12 months—the six months paid and then the six months of statutory—and 80% of men take over five months. Whichever way you look at the stats, men generally take between 21 and—the best we have ever got up to—25 weeks, in terms of average. We have done a number of focus groups to understand the question: why are you coming back early if you have the time off? To be candid, it is due to all the challenges that women have had over decades in terms of being worried about whether the company will be okay without them. It is also genuinely a bit about their job and all those fears that we know for many, many years mothers have gone through. We desperately try to push you to get to 26. Our goal is that we get that. We are obviously happy we are getting to 21, which is the average for this year; previously it has been higher. It is a fairly good figure, but 26 weeks would be good. It has a huge impact when those fathers come back into the organisation.

We have made a concerted effort since it was first introduced to start using role models to talk about what they then do in that time off. We do lots of storytelling. Like most organisations, people tend to listen slightly more to senior people. Of course, there are fewer senior people, unfortunately, because it takes a bit longer sometimes to get more senior to be the role models. But we have had a number of examples where quite high-profile individuals have taken the full time off and then come back into the organisation. We had a huge event recently for International Women’s Day, where we had a male director talk about the time they had off and the impact it had. What was also crucial about that was they then talked about what happens going forward. They were role modelling around saying, “And I will be dropping at the nursery two days a week. My wife works, and this is what she does.” It is part of our goal that we get fathers far more involved in the early years, which will then obviously have an impact how much they are involved in later years as well.

Our gender pay gap has come down every single year since we published it. I would candidly tell you it is still too high, but it has come down every single year. There are so many different factors that go into it. At the same time that we introduced the equal parental leave, we also introduced a target in line with the Treasury’s Women in Finance that 40% of our leaders would be women; that is the most senior 5%, so those are big, big jobs, I would say. We achieved that early at 41%. If you put the equal parental leave together with a real focus on women, being fortunate to be one of very few companies who has a woman chief executive who is doing really well and the organisation doing well, all those factors contribute towards our reduction in our pay gap, but equally our increase in leadership representation. The metric that I look towards—again, I cannot dictate that it is surely down to this; it is about many factors—is that our employee engagement, which I mentioned last Tuesday, is outstanding. It is over 90%—91%. We know that that is because individuals in the organisation feel they can be themselves at work. In this case, being yourself at work might well be the fact that you are a father who does not have the concern about coming in slightly later and going slightly early because there are other things that you want to go and do. Look, I cannot categorically say that, but we believe it is one of the factors that affects such high engagement.

For us, culture is absolutely everything. We work in an organisation where values are really important. Bear in mind that we are the largest UK insurer, so we need to make sure that people do the right thing by customers and colleagues. Having that more caring culture—it is one of our four values—stands out massively. One of the things that we did when I set up the employee resource groups five years ago was introduce a new one called carers. Different from other companies, we included parents. It grew to be one of the largest communities that I created, over things that many people just see as part of everyday life. It is a bit about sharing how you can balance parenting and working and thrive at both. There is a whole community that has come from that, and we know that higher retention and lower turnover is one of a number of good outputs that come because of the culture that we are creating—creating rather than created.

It is really important to think holistically about the support that organisations have in place for working parents. Parental leave is incredibly important, but if the culture is one where people do not feel that they are able to take up the leave or that it might negatively impact their career progression, we are not going to be able to move forward on this. I mentioned this in the previous session, but there is a whole range of things that employers can do. That includes having transparent policies around their support for working parents; that might be parental leave, flexible working or support groups, as Jonny just alluded to. It might be comprehensive flexible working policies, so not just flexibility and location but also thinking about patterns and hours and how that can be enabled. Jonny has spoken a lot about this already, but role models at different levels throughout the organisation can be really encouraging in terms of supporting people to talk about their caring responsibilities. Having that supportive conversation with your line manager is also pivotal. Some training for line managers around this can be really helpful so that first, they know what policies are on offer within the organisation, but they also take a one-to-one approach with their team members to ensure that they are getting the support and flexibility that they need. There is also a really helpful piece around return-to-work support to make sure that people are fully integrated back after parental leave, through things like flexible working, support groups, tailored support sessions and training. We are a judge for the Working Dads Employer Awards with Elliott Rae and the Equal Parenting Project, and we regularly hear from award winners about great examples of the wider benefits of taking a holistic approach to supporting dads and working parents in general. We have some data from one of our surveys from 2022 in which we looked at what support employers have in place. Around a third offer access to remote or hybrid working, 29% of employers support parents through providing flexibility in start and finish times to help with school drop-offs and pickups, and 28% proactively promote flexible working options such as job shares, term-time working and part-time working. We also have around a quarter that have support around health and wellbeing through things like mentoring or counselling. It is worth noting that around a quarter said that their organisation does not have anything in place to support employees with caring responsibilities. There is still a big gap in provision for some organisations.

I am going to move on to some excluded groups because we have heard about what works well, particularly from Jonny and Claire. Nikki, a third of self-employed tradesmen did not take a single day of leave after the birth of their child. Which groups of parents who are excluded from the parental leave system, or poorly provided for, should be prioritised in the Government’s review later this year? Do you think that given the substantial contribution of self-employed dads to our economy, they should be an immediate priority?

Absolutely. We know that worker status plays a huge role in what rights people can and cannot access. It is particularly challenging for self-employed dads, workers who might be on insecure contracts or agency workers because, again, they tend not to meet the eligibility criteria for statutory entitlement. We would want to see those groups prioritised, but we also know that there are issues with single parents. I also mentioned in my previous session about self-employed mothers and how maternity allowance interacts with universal credit. They can be up to £6,000 a year worse off than a mother on maternity leave claiming statutory maternity pay and universal credit. We would like the review to look at all these groups because self-employed dads are a really important group, but we do not want to have to come back to do a fix later on because a group has been excluded. It is really important to look at this holistically and how it supports workers. We know that worker status and the eligibility criteria are a particular barrier for a number of parents, particularly around consistent earnings and length of service in work. We would like to see some focus on that; again, regardless of employment status, income levels and family type. Everyone needs access to some form of well-remunerated period of leave to be able to spend time with their families.

Jonny, even if this is something that is offered, how do we ensure that society views it as a positive thing? It would be great to hear from you perhaps about some reluctance that there was initially for dads taking up a big share of leave and being involved.

It comes out in a whole host of different ways. I cannot give you evidence, but we are fairly sure that some line managers, for example, have been less welcoming about somebody taking six months off and have made comments like, “Will you be taking the full six months off?” I do not have an example of that, but we are fearful that some people might be encouraged to come back early, particularly with those who would have maybe only had two weeks being told, “Well, you’re getting 26, but...” One thing is that it is all very well having a policy, but it needs to have a culture that ensures that it is enacted. We are pretty much nearly there in that, but I could not conclusively say. This business of role models makes a huge difference: if people look and see, that encourages others to try to behave in that sort of way. That is something that just massively stands out in regard to that. There is also the follow-up beyond that, which happens a few years later, but it is about making sure that people can see that it is not just that they come back to work and go back to the grindstone. We have parental coaching, which helps people in that balance between work and home to make sure they get that right. Then, there are just small things every so often. For the first day at school you tend to take half a day off so that you can go to the first day at school and really enjoy that and thrive in that. That is four years down the line, but actually it is a big thing in the family, and it just keeps re-emphasising the importance of that culture that they have. There are a number of things—not any big main thing, but a whole lot of smaller things that can make a difference.

Claire, should the Government consider bringing kinship carers into the statutory parental leave system? We know that eight in 10 kinship carers reduce their hours or quit altogether, so I was wondering if the CIPD has any policies or suggestions when it comes to kinship carers.

There are around 164,000 children at the moment growing up in kinship care in England and Wales. It is certainly an area that needs further exploration and consultation with employers, but also with kinship carers themselves, to understand what their needs are and what could be supported. I suppose our perspective is that with employers facing so many demands currently, this might be something that could be considered over the longer term and as a phased approach in terms of what support might be needed. This is certainly an area that we need to start thinking about and really considering what the needs are.

Jonny, does Aviva provide anything for kinship carers, or is this an area that perhaps might be explored at a later date?

It does not. I have to have to say that when I saw that might come up, I had a good look to see if there was anything, such as any discussions in our social boards, and it is just not something that has come across our radar. I did not realise it was quite so big in terms of Claire’s figures just there.

Nikki, is there anything in terms of the TUC’s perspective when it comes to kinship care and kinship carers’ access to rights at work at all?

Yes. We do not have specific research on kinship carers through our members, so as Claire said, I would not want to speak on everything that might work best for them. However, we saw a landmark agreement reached between Tesco and USDAW in 2023. USDAW was able to negotiate a policy with Tesco that gave kinship carers who have a special guardianship order to care for relatives’ children equal rights with colleagues who adopt, giving both 26 weeks of leave on full pay. It was quite a landmark agreement, but again, it just speaks to that point of how it is a group of people who are excluded. They absolutely need access in the same way that any other parent or someone with caring responsibilities would.

Nikki, I want to delve down a bit more. Coming back to the point I made around a third of self-employed tradesmen not taking a single day off after the birth of their child, how do we ensure that shared parental leave does not just stay as something that London dads take? We have heard about the issue of more shared parental leave being taken in London than anywhere else in the entire country put together. How do we ensure that this is something that people want, know about, and can have access to, regardless of their job, type of employment, or place that they work?

As we have discussed at length, for those who are currently entitled to some sort of shared parental leave—just the statutory minimum—the biggest barrier is pay and the rate of pay; many families cannot afford to use that leave. There are those who are excluded because they do not meet the eligibility criteria. They might be in employment or have the right worker status, but their earnings thresholds do not meet those requirements, and there are lots of other intricacies. Those eligibility criteria need to be scrapped, simplified and much less onerous. For self-employed dads and workers who do not have the employee status, we need to look at worker status and access to statutory rights, regardless of what your worker status is. Whether you are self-employed, an agency worker or a direct employee, access to statutory entitlements would be a big first step in order to enable anyone who needs it to take advantage of these rights. They are a significantly excluded group. There can also be lots of intricacies in terms of contracts. We have members who are working in things like the entertainment industry, where their employment status, again, is complex. They might be contracted as a worker for a short period of time to work on a project and then they are not. If that crosses over with when they might need to take some leave and that sort of thing, it can be a real barrier. We need to look at worker status and eligibility criteria to give everyone a level playing field and access. Beyond that, we would still need to look at the rates of remuneration for statutory entitlements, particularly around paternity leave. Two weeks, even broken up over a year, is not going to drive the culture shift that we want to see; we need to see extensions to that entitlement as well.

I am just going to move on to the timescales and the review for Government reform. Claire, what should be the key objectives for the Government’s proposed full review of the SPL system? What do you think should be the priority areas for that reform?

The review should obviously incorporate evidence from this Committee and other sources, including international comparisons, because there is a lot of international evidence that many companies have submitted that we could learn a lot from. It is important to take a holistic view of any change that is needed to support greater gender equality and, in turn, labour market participation. The review should take a look at all the different types of parental leave that are currently offered in the UK, and it should consider what reforms would help to boost uptake and how the different types of parental leave interact with one another. Some themes that we have been talking about here are really looking at an enhanced statutory provision for paternity leave but also shared parental leave. That is something that definitely should be considered. We would also very much support doing something in terms of the gap in provision for self-employed fathers. We have a maternity allowance, but we do not have any type of equivalent paternity allowance. Our overall view is that given the many provisions that are coming through in the Employment Rights Bill, and its amendments, and then we have the equality Bill coming through, it would make sense to potentially take a phased approach to implementing some of the changes from this review, so that they are implemented after the majority of these changes. Businesses have a lot to focus on and get their heads around at the moment. Some of our recent survey findings showed that four in five organisations expect the planned measures in the Employment Rights Bill to increase their recruitment costs. There are also fears around job losses and reduced hiring. Further changes need to be thought through and really carefully timed. We would encourage the Government to consult thoroughly with employers and representative bodies to ensure that the recommendations are practical, workable, and likely to bring about real change in this important area.

Following on from Claire’s question: Jonny, we had heard about looking at some international examples, and there is quite a wide range of different international examples. Given the range, the potentially high costs of reforms in this area and the impacts on business—as we heard from Claire—about possible phasing of this, what would be a sensible timescale for implementation of reforms?

If I can think back to when we looked at this, we actually went very quickly. We came up with the idea, investigated it and spoke to other organisations. There were very few in the UK, and we went externally. We were able to implement it within a year and a half in the UK. We took a lot longer to go to our two other big markets, which are Ireland and Canada. I would just emphasise Claire’s point around how the international learnings are significant, and that is where we were able to get fairly good ideas in terms of what we should have as the provision.

Nikki, last question from me, and I will open it up and see if anybody else has any other questions. By which metric do you think the Government should measure the success of their reforms?

Some questions around metrics could be included in the review to get a sense of what would be helpful in terms of monitoring in businesses and from trade unions. In particular, we would want to see tracking of improvements in take-up and ensuring that we are gathering that data and seeing improvements for families who are typically excluded: those on lower incomes, self-employed workers, workers with insecure employment status and single-parent families. We would also like to consider monitoring the broader and longer-term impacts. As has been alluded to in some evidence today, the parental leave element is really important, but it is also about the longer-term impacts in businesses and in society. What is the uptake of flexible working between mums, dads and co-parents in the workplace? What are recruitment and retention rates and progression in the workplace? That is particularly for mums and parents who are returning from leave and that type of thing, so that we can measure those broader impacts and see the longer-term benefits. Again, then we have information about the cost-benefits and investment into the system.

Thank you very much. Do Committee members have any further questions? Catherine and then Alex.

It has been a really interesting and far-ranging discussion. Of course, we are all aware that there is no silver bullet that will improve shared parental leave. If it was that simple, I guess we would have done it. But I am going to put you all on the spot and ask you, if there was one thing that could be done tomorrow to improve the situation around shared parental leave, what would that be?

The one thing would have to be to enhance the payment aspect of shared parental leave. That is the thing that is stopping the take-up, really. That is one thing. The other thing would be that we need to raise awareness more with employees so that there can be information early on for mothers and fathers about shared parental leave, but we also need to simplify the process for employers. I shared with James that we have recently shared a neonatal leave and pay infographic with our members. It is quite complicated new legislation that is coming in, but the engagement levels with it have been wonderful. Loads of people have liked it and shared it. A visual like that around shared parental leave would help to promote understanding from employers. We also need something for employees, but it is the enhanced payment provision that would make a difference.

Yes, I would agree. We are most commonly told that enhanced pay is the biggest barrier. Looking at how quickly we can move to an individual right for both parents would also really help because that will simplify some admin. When we have surveyed and done polling on this, one of the challenges is also that—rightly—mothers do not want to give up part of their leave. They do not just need it for caring and bonding with their child; they need it for recovery and, for those who choose to, for breastfeeding. That is also tied to pay, but that would be really important.

The role of the father. Dads are parents too, and one of the reasons we got ours is because dads internally in the organisation said, “Wait a minute, we want increased leave, we want to be involved.” The more they are involved, the longer that lasts in terms of the early years and beyond.

We did a lot of data science in regard to the gender pay gap to see if we could do anything and how we could bring it down. We found out we had a significant gender pay gap even before the average age of somebody going off on leave. We have looked at so many things to try to see if we can get the gender pay gap reduced. It is so multifaceted, but the challenges have already happened before someone goes on leave, which is not great news, but that is certainly a reality here and, I suspect, in other companies.

Yes, I suspect it does. A stat that I did not share is that women take an average of 12 months, so they take longer. We know through data science that the longer you take off, the slower your progression. Therefore, it is a double whammy in terms of affecting women. They might go at a slightly more junior level, then when they come back, bear in mind that legally they have to come back to the same level—not the same job—if they are out for over six months that is the challenge. That is why we introduced parental coaching to try to accelerate as much as we can. Sorry, just to add another bit of bad news, but it is a reality: if you are looking at metrics, the number of part-time colleagues who are men is quite an interesting one. We have 2,500 part-time colleagues in the UK, out of a population of about 17,000; 90% of them are women, and most of them have come back from leave. If that was reduced, so say it was 20-30% men, that would indicate that they were taking a stronger role in upbringing over the longer term.

Yes, we shared a few different examples that were really interesting. The example in Spain is a good one. You have probably talked about this previously in your Committee meeting, but also Sweden and Iceland, where there are individual entitlements. That works really well. I came across a really helpful study by Earle in 2023, which is an analysis across loads of different studies. Some key lessons from that are about making sure that any wage replacement rate is at least 80%. That would be a critical determinant of parents’ take-up, particularly fathers. There is also the importance of including flexibility in how the leave can be taken and addressing institutional and cultural barriers that might prevent fathers, as well as mothers, from using their leave. It is also important to make sure that there are legal provisions that prohibit retaliation for taking paid leave and protect caregivers of all genders from discrimination. Those are the lessons from an international comparison study. There is some really rich data that we can draw upon there.

Again, let me express our gratitude to you for coming back. This has been really insightful and useful. Thank you very much to all three of you. That brings this session to a close.