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2005/06

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Work and Families Act

Key Benefits
The measures will help to ensure that every child gets the best start in life; give families more choice about how to balance their work and caring responsibilities; help support employers in recruiting and retaining the best people; and promote social justice and fairness by: Extending maternity and adoption pay from six to nine months from April 2007, towards the goal of a year's paid leave by the end of the Parliament; Widening the scope of the existing law to enable carers of adults to request to work flexibly from April 2007; Giving employed fathers a new right to up to 26 weeks Additional Paternity Leave some of which could be paid, if the mother returns to work. This will be introduced alongside the extension of maternity pay to 12 months; Introducing measures to help employers manage the administration of leave and pay and plan ahead with greater certainty; Providing an enabling power to extend the entitlement to 4 weeks leave, making it additional to time equivalent to bank (and public) holidays; Providing a one-off power to increase the maximum amount of a week's pay affecting compensation payments in connection with, in particular, redundancy, unfair dismissal and insolvency.

Act of Parliament

Explanatory Notes

Territorial Extent
Great Britain

Comments

If you have any comments you can email them to:

steve.martin@dti.gsi.gov.uk

Additional Information

The Act is the first step towards delivery of the measures set out in the Government Response to the consultation, "Work and Families: Choice and Flexibility". The consultation was based on proposals set out in the 2004 Ten Year Childcare Strategy. A number of the measures outlined in the Act are being delivered through secondary legislation.

The response and the consultation are available at:www.dti.gov.uk/employment/workandfamilies/, alongside other relevant documents.

Department of Trade & Industry