Earlier this week we got invited along to the launch of a report by Reform about maternity/paternity pay and leave.

The gist of its proposals are:

* Change current maternity pay to parental pay

* Abolish salary-related element of maternity pay and pay it at a flat rate (£5,000) for all parents

* Stop making the pay dependent on amount of time taken off work

You can read the full report here.

The report's authors are keen to get a debate going and will be following this thread to hear your reactions, comments and ideas.

Thanks,
MNHQ

The website in the link is not loading for me!

So my only question, based on those bullet points is: £5,000 for a year? Flat rate? That's not that much than you get at the moment, for 9 months, or whatever it is!

Okayyyyy - it's quite extensive!!! Reading through now - a few thoughts:

1. Love the title - I can see what they are doing to try to get away from the concept of leave being all about mothers, and all about a drain on the economy.

2. They say that 6 months is the "optimum length" of leave. I would disagree with this - if the WHO guidelines are to bf for at least 6 months, and most mothers take a month before the birth, that means returning to work when the baby is 5 months old, which is really very soon.

3. Productivity not Presenteeism - lots of good stuff here.

4. Flat payment - the problem here I guess is that you tend to depend on a certain level of income and gear your outgoings around that. A flat £5,000 payment could cut some workers pay by a substantial amount if they earn higher amounts, and the assumption seems to be that because they earn more, they will be able to afford it, whereas they may have structured their outgoings around a high salary and have little free cash.

I'd be in favour of parental pay definitely. I'd have really appreciated the option for dh to have taken the second half of my leave.

Firstly, let me admit that I don't fully understand that as I haven't had children yet.

However, we're planning on TTC in the Autumn. Fair enough, people earning less will (still) earn less but, (and I know this may sound unfair), they are used to it. If you have worked loads and then suddenly your salary goes down that much, how do you afford your mortgage and all those things?! We don't earn loads (but I do work full time) and to earn less than I do already, is scary. When I am able to go back to work, it won't financially be viable for me to because of paying for a nursery (DH is a teacher so although at the bottom end, earns enough that the government wouldn't pay out).

As for the pay being related to the amount of time taken off work, granted it's not a good idea, it makes people go back before they're ready. But unless there is a system in place to give the same amount of money until your children are legal adults, surely at some point it will be related to the amount of time you've taken off.

As for parental leave (and the stupid low income you get) it's not very good but at the risk of sounding sexist, why do men need more than a couple of weeks off? Surely the answer is to pay them a normal full time salary (make the companies pay not the government). Making it 'parental leave' surely just means the mother who is recovering and dealing with a new life will be put back and be viewed with less importance?

As I say, I haven't experienced any of this yet but we're in the process of buying a house (with a mortgage a third of our joint salaries) and it makes me feel sick every time I try to work out if we'll be able to afford it still when I'm not working. I don't know if it happens but, why not pay parents council tax for a year? I know LA's would get less money but surely, that would be more beneficial and more direct to cut parents costs?

Feel free to ignore me as (I've already stated), I'm in an ideal world on this not a real one!!

Parental pay is an excellent idea.

I agree with Bramshott that 6 months is quite short if you are going to breastfeed, particularly given that many bf babies refuse to take a bottle.

Not sure about the flat payment. I agree that lower income families could do with more support, but what about higher income families where the woman is the main breadwinner? In such cases, £5000 will not go very far. OK, the father could take time off work, but as I know from bitter experience, many men are not that comfortable in sole charge of a very young baby.

Haven't time to read it in full yet, will look back later, but I agree with randomtask, men don't need so much time off as women. Women may be recovering from surgery (may need 12 weeks at least) and also may be breastfeeding. This works alot better with mother and baby being close. I don't get why men and women must be exactly the same, many men do not want to be stay home dads or have leave, DH was glad to be back. Anyway will check back later when have read it nd know what I am talking about!

I hadn't read about the 6 months. I think it should be a year at most. It doesn't work if you are BF and also that's probably just about the point you start feeling human again and getting into a routine. Just puts more pressure on Mums.

random task: I may be misunderstanding you, but men need time off to look after their baby. Granted, as I bf dh wouldn't have been able to look after ds in the same way at that stage (without a lot of expressing faff or ds being brought to my workplace, which I have known to work for some people) but the second six months, he could easily have been the sahp and I could have gone back to work full time before we made the decision at 12 months what we were going to do.

As I earn more (pro-rata now) than dh it would have made sense for our family. There are lots of women who are the higher wage earners and for whom "maternity" leave does not make the best financial sense.

If someone is on a low wage already, the percentage drop in her income that results from taking maternity leave is potentially very low indeed. If someone is on a higher wage, once the first 6 weeks at 90% are over, the percentage drop to £120 a week or whatever SMP is now might be huge, meaning taking a long maternity leave is simply out of the question, especially if she is the main breadwinner.

So there is equally an argument that in fact more of maternity (or parental) pay should be based around earnings, rather than less.