Open letter to Party Leaders

Published: 1 Jul 2024

10 Downing Street, the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Dear Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer,

Supporting working parents and carers

We are writing to you on behalf of the Families and Work Group to ask you to commit to making the next Government deliver for the UK’s 13 million working parents and three million unpaid working carers, should you be elected on July 4^th.

Working parents and unpaid carers for disabled, older or ill relatives or friends, have faced a challenging couple of years with the pandemic and rising cost of living, particularly those from lower income households. This demographic have been:

Least likely to benefit from changes to working patterns seen since the pandemic, and are more likely to be subject to insecure working arrangements. Only a fifth of shift workers receive a month’s notice or more, making it challenging to arrange childcare to fit their working hours.[1]
On average mothers on a lower income take four months less maternity leave than women from households with an income over £50K per year; a quarter of fathers on a lower income have no entitlement to paternity leave; and only 29% of lower income working parents have access to enhanced parental leave and pay.[2]
Over 50% of working parents on lower incomes have had to reduce their working hours in order to manage childcare needs, and 4 in 10 have gone into debt to pay for childcare.[3]

However, over the course of the last parliament we have been delighted to see cross-party support for a range of measures to improve access to flexible working, extend redundancy protections for new parents taking leave, introduce carer’s leave, and new childcare entitlements.

We hope that the next Government will continue to legislate for working parents and carers and be ambitious when it comes to removing the barriers people with caring responsibilities face when seeking to access and progress in employment. We urge you to prioritise the following should you lead the next government:

Improve rates of statutory parental/adoption leave pay, extending the duration of paternity leave, and providing kinship carers with leave entitlements.
Review childcare access and affordability to guarantee that every parent can access quality childcare that they can afford.
Review the impact of recent flexible working legislation and introduce further initiatives to boost the numbers of secure jobs designed and advertised with flexibility.
Guarantee the social welfare system provides for parents and carers in times of need, by ensuring that Universal Credit, Carer’s Allowance and other means-tested benefits associated with caring adequately support the needs of recipients, do not unduly penalise those increasing working hours, and are paid in a timely manner.
Ensure better protection in the workplace for those with caring responsibilities.

Action on these areas will help support progress towards reducing economic inactivity, achieving greater gender equality and tackling poverty. We would be delighted to support your efforts on these issues and measures designed to support working parents and carers, particularly those on lower incomes.

We look forward to working with you and your government in the future.

Signed by