"It was encouraging to see today's King's speech affirm the Labour Government's desire to strengthen worker rights including introducing a policy to ban exploitative employment practices. However, there was a lack of detail about what other policy might be forthcoming on workers’ rights and to what extent the policy ideas from Labour's New Deal for Working People will be delivered. We encourage the new Labour Government to continue to think about how they can develop policies to actively support working families as part of an extended agenda on workers' rights.
Making flexible working more accessible to all workers and supporting fathers and non-birthing parents to do more childcare in the first year are key drivers for gender equality which would promote inclusive care, help reduce the gender pay gap and enhance women's labour market attachment after having children. Existing research shows that the first key step on the road to more gender equality around care must be to extend the leave targeted at working dads and other non-birthing parents beyond the paltry two weeks (less than almost any other OECD country) and £184.03 a week they are currently entitled to."
