I welcome the flexibility for families to organise leave in the way that suits them best.
I wonder how this practically works in terms of parental leave pay packages -e.g. DH and I worked for different organisations, the maternity leave pay package was much better where he worked (6 months full pay, then SMP compared to my package of 3 months full pay, 3 months half pay, 3 months SMP). I was p/t, he was f/t when it came to my 2nd pregnancy and birth. How will employers/households work out what the implications are?
I'm really concerned about the ability to return to work 2 weeks after giving birth. Whatever the intention, this will be translated into expectation and pressure in some situations meaning that some women may have a hard time saying no to this. There is no way I could have been back at work 2 weeks after the 1st. Why has this changed from 6 weeks? Is there any medical advice involved in that change?
This is all great but doesn't address the key problem of barriers to childcare. Agree with squirrel here - the biggest barrier to ongoing involvement in the labour market in the long term is the cost of childcare. That can't change since the margins on it aren't great (and who would want to see ratios reduced), so needs subsidy to enable more women to remain as taxpayers in the long term.
I don't know if this is still true now, but the cabinet recently contained more millionaires than women. At the beginning of the coalition it contained more people named David than women. And perhaps it shows in policies like this.. Whilst flexibility for famililes is great, their plan is inadequate, risks putting horrible pressure on women to return to work before they're fit, and misses a chance to address the key issue - the prohibitive cost of childcare.