ALL civil service employees of both sexes will be offered equal parental pay and support from next year, Nick Clegg will announce this week.
The change means fathers will now benefit from enhanced pay - as mothers currently do - for shared parental leave.
After a previous announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister last year, all new parents will have a choice over how they split their statutory entitlement from April. However, there will not be an onus on employers who offer enhanced occupational maternity schemes to do so on an equal basis.
This means that, while fathers have the right to take leave, they may be discouraged if their partner receives occupational benefits and they do not. Mr Clegg hopes equalising occupational support for the civil service from April will encourage other organisations to do so.
In a speech, the Liberal Democrat leader will say: "It's critical that people who choose to work in the public sector know they're working in modern, progressive workplaces.
"I pushed for the introduction of shared parental leave in the first place because I fundamentally believe it's time for us to sweep away the outdated regulations and prejudices which still limit the choices of too many people in this country.
"Evidence shows promoting flexible working patterns like this can help boost employee productivity, loyalty and retention.
"To help get that revolution started in the public sector, working with the Cabinet Office, I've been pushing hard for radical reforms to the way in which the civil service pays and supports its staff after their children are born."
He added: "It will no longer just be new mums working in the civil service who can take maternity leave at full pay.
"Dads will also be able to benefit from enhanced pay for shared parental leave, if both parents choose to carve up their time between them.
"This means more fathers will be able to afford to take time off to spend caring for their newborn children. More widely, I want to see this change blaze a trail for other public- and private-sector organisations."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article