Call for year's paid paternity leave for new fathers

Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, said families could be allowed to choose which parent claimed parental leave and pay for the first 12 months after the birth of their child.

He also wants all workers to be allowed to ask for flexible working hours and for women to be able to force employers to reveal if they are being paid less than their male counterparts.

The plans were set out in a speech to a think-tank in London in which Mr Milburn called on the government to do more to help parents balance work and home life.

Mr Milburn quit the Cabinet last year to spend more time with his family. Insisting life felt "a million times better" since leaving the frontbench, he admitted that not everyone could afford to "buy more time" by doing less work.

The arch-Blairite MP is often used by Downing Street to test the water for new policy ideas. He said a central theme of a third Labour term should be to help working parents make choices over how they spend their time.

He wants the government to set out a ten- to 15-year strategy outlining its plans to help families balance work and home life - which would also apply in Scotland if it was introduced.

"People want to have a choice in their lives, but with too little practical help still available more people are being forced to make a stark choice between work and home, rather than being able to choose a better balance between both," he said.

"For fairness sake, the opportunity to choose cannot just be the preserve of those who can afford to work less. Choice is currently only for those with the cash.

"That is unfair and in my view must be changed. A Labour government should not ignore choice. It should redistribute it."

Low- and middle-income families faced a triple problem of long hours, the gender pay gap and inflexible childcare, he said.

Mr Milburn said paid paternity leave should be extended beyond the current two weeks, and he argued that there was a "strong case" for allowing families to choose which parent should be able to claim parental leave and pay.

The call comes as ministers are reportedly considering introducing a "daddy month" for men who want to spend more time with their children. In Sweden, the policy gives a month of paid parental leave per child to the father at 80 per cent of pay.

In Britain, new mothers are entitled to 26 weeks’ paid maternity leave. Fathers can take two consecutive weeks’ paternity leave at 100 a week or 90 per cent of average weekly earnings if that is less than 100.

Mr Milburn also wants free child-care places for poorer families. Better-off parents would pay a sliding scale - depending on their income - for care over the current two-and-a-half hours a day of free childcare.

To tackle long hours, Mr Milburn called for workers to be given more flexibility in the hours they work. He wants a code of practice to help employers assess requests to work flexibly and a new award, like Investors in People, to reward firms with family friendly policies.

He said he did not want more legislation, but said it sent the wrong signal to cap compensation at too low levels for employees who win tribunal cases against employers who unreasonably deny requests to work flexibly.

He also called on the government to look at allowing flexible hours for staff with older children and elderly dependants. He said, in time, all employees could be entitled to request flexible hours.