A charity has written to the Prime Minister calling for him to do more to improve the lives of the UK’s 12 million working parents, including boosting early years funding.
Within the letter, Working Families, supported by members of its Academic Advisory Board – a group of experts from universities across the UK on issues relating to flexible working – argues that Spring Budget was a ‘missed opportunity’ to make the positive changes needed to help families.
It goes on to highlight the ‘key’ policy areas where it believes the Government need to make changes, they are:
- Addressing the shortfall in childcare funding.
- Prioritising the ‘plight’ of working parents by protecting those on universal credit and legacy benefits.
- Bringing forward the implementation of neonatal leave and pay provisions.
- Addressing the inequalities affecting new mothers on universal credit (UC) who are also receiving maternity allowance (MA) rather than statutory maternity pay (SMP). MA is treated as unearned income therefore impacting UC, while SMP is treated as earnings so some, or all of it, may be disregarded when calculating UC entitlement due to the work allowance and taper rate.
- Reviewing the rates of pay for statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay.
