Maybe the Department for Business & Trade missed the memo about Father’s Day always being celebrated on the third Sunday in June, but they waited until 29 June to publish their response to the consultation on reform of parental leave and pay that they launched four years ago, in July 2019, with its gift to future new fathers of “more flexible” statutory paid paternity leave.

Yep, four long years of contemplating “high level options for reforming parental leave and pay”, and all that the DB&T wonks and their ministerial bosses have come up with is one minor reform to paternity leave. So, under this government at least, there will be no reform of the chronically failing Shared Parental Leave scheme, and no enhancement of the UK’s less than generous maternity leave and pay.

In short, four years have been utterly wasted. Because there is little if any demand for the one proposed reform: to “allow eligible fathers to take their Paternity Leave and Pay in two separate blocks of one week of leave (two weeks in total) at any point in the first year”.

The (somewhat ambiguous) question posed in the 2019 consultation (Q8) was:

How should the timing of when Paternity Leave can be taken be balanced between giving families choice and flexibility, and incentivising particular parental behaviours? For example, should fathers/partners be able to take Paternity Leave at any point in the first year or be required to take their leave when the mother has returned to work to incentivise solo parenting?

The Government’s consultation response states that “respondents tended to agree that Paternity Leave and Pay should be designed in a more flexible way so that fathers and partners could take it in a way that suits them best”. And, in Annex One, it states that:

64% of all respondents said the Government should provide more flexibility and allow fathers to take their [up to two weeks of paternity] leave within one year of the birth of their child. They also thought this would promote solo parenting by fathers.

However, it’s hard to find supporting evidence for these statements. Who were the 64%?

Well, not the Fatherhood Institute, who baldly stated (in their response to the consultation) that the above question “does not make sense”, before noting the OECD’s definition of paternity leave: “employment-protected leave of absence for employed fathers at or in the first few months after childbirth“. And not Maternity Action, who stated (in their response to the consultation):

Paternity leave is, by definition, leave that is taken immediately after the birth. This should remain a separate entitlement to parental leave. Fathers and partners should be provided with paid parental leave which can be provided more flexibly, can be taken up to a year or 18 months from the birth and can be designed to incentivise solo parenting.

Paternity leave should be restricted to a shorter period of well paid leave at the time of the birth to enable new fathers and partners to spend time with their new baby and support the mother after the birth. In order to reduce complexity and scope for disputes we recommend that paternity leave should remain a two week block as at present.

The trade union Unite was also not among the 64%, as in their response they stated:

Paternity Leave is there for one purpose only and that is the need for fathers/partners/nominated carers to bond with the baby and support and care for the mother recovering from childbirth and her breastfeeding and therefore, it can be flexible but should be around the birth [emphasis added]. Parental Leave however, is a period of leave to be taken in the first 18 months to care for the child(ren).

Also not among the 64% were the Equality & Human Rights Commission and the TUC who, rather than address the specific questions set out in the consultation, simply set out their own proposals for policy reform. But nothing they said in their responses could be construed as support for ‘allowing fathers to take their existing paternity leave entitlement within one year of the birth of their child’.

Nor can I see any support – explicit or merely implicit – for ‘allowing fathers to take their existing paternity leave entitlement within one year of the birth of their child’ in the responses of Close the Gap (Scotland’s expert policy advocacy organisation on women’s labour market participation), the Women’s Budget Group, the British Medical Association (BMA), and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

Sure enough, Parental Pay Equality did call for “a minimum 12 weeks of paternity leave with a six-week portion paid at 90% to be taken at any time in the first 18 months and split into blocks”, but you’d have to be a bit desperate to count that as support for ‘allowing fathers to take their existing paternity leave entitlement within one year of the birth of their child’.

It goes without saying that, in general, flexibility in family leave provisions is a good thing, and no doubt there will be some new fathers who will be glad to be able to take one or even both of their two weeks of paternity leave later in the first year, rather than immediately after the birth. But I don’t think there will be many of them. Because one of the messages that comes out of the recent Centre for Progressive Policy/Pregnant Then Screwed report is that some new mothers want their partner to be at home, supporting them after the birth, for longer than two weeks. (Which is precisely why, under the 6+6+6 model of maternity and parenting leave proposed by Maternity Action since 2019 – but which both the CPP and PTS have declined to support – fathers would be able to use some – or even all – of their six-month entitlement to paid parenting leave to extend their two weeks of paternity leave). So the ability to forsake paternity leave at the time of birth in favour of taking two weeks off to solo parent once the birth mother has returned to work would appear to me to have extremely limited value.

So, why do it? Well, my guess is that ministers felt they had to come up with something – four years is a long time to think about an issue and then do nothing. And they do have an outstanding manifesto commitment from December 2019 to “make it easier for fathers to take paternity leave”. They can now claim to have ticked that box (assisted by helpful headlines in the robotic specialist press), and the employer lobby groups will settle for the consultation not having led to anything more significant.

Whatever, the quest for a more equitable and ‘father inclusive’ system of parental leave that properly reflects the different purposes of maternity, paternity and parenting leave goes on. Will the Labour Party deliver? Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.