Do BOTH of the twiplets’ dads get paternity leave?

Ed Miliband promised yesterday that if labour wins the next election he will double paid paternity leave. new dads will be entitled to take four weeks off work and receive £260 a week. This big idea was heavily trailed last summer in the run up to Father’s day. it was bonkers then and it’s bonkers now.

as i wrote at the time: where is the evidence that young men are crying out for more time to spend with their newborn bay-bees? labour is further proposing that couples are allowed to share maternity leave entitlement of up to a year.

Why? Under existing rules, drawn up by nick Clegg and introduced in 2011, new dads already qualify for up to 20 weeks’ paid holiday to allow their wives to go back to work.

How many of them do you think have taken advantage of the additional Paternity leave scheme? Fifty per cent? Twenty-five per cent? no, the last time anyone looked the take-up rate was just 1.4 per cent.

From april, the entitlement increases to a full year. How many new fathers do you think will apply for that? One per cent? nobody? Mister Ed claims his Father’s Month — geddit? — will benefit 400,000 families. That’s because he’s doubling the weekly handout, which currently stands at £138 a week. He believes he can bribe men to do the right thing. and that’s what it’s really all about: forcing reluctant working families to swallow metropolitan, middle - class assumptions of what constitutes proper ‘shared parenting’ practices.

This is a policy designed, not for the hard-pressed couples trying to make ends meet, but to appease the affluent Guardianista madwomen who run the Mumsnet website.

Their partners — i doubt many of them are actually married — may be able to afford to take a pay cut for a month in exchange for a handout of £260 a week, equivalent to the minimum wage. but most people can’t.

SO WHy should taxpayers’ money be used to allow the political class to impose their patronising, condescending, cultural obsessions on the rest of us? On Sky news yesterday, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the scheme said it would ‘de-stigmatise the mummy trap’.

( At the back of the West Stand, Tottenham, on Saturday, during half-time in the North London derby, the talk was of little else. ‘Never mind whether Ozil beat the offside trap, what are we going to do about de-stigmatising the mummy trap?’)

She went on to say that planning to spend £150 million we haven’t got on paying able-bodied young men to sit around the house changing nappies, boiling bottles, drinking beer and munching Kettle Chips, while trying to get the baby off to sleep in front of Cbeebies, was worth it because: ‘Children are the future.’ bless. She sounded like that dopey bird who burned down her council flat when her candle-lit Whitney Houston shrine toppled over and set fire to the curtains.

‘ I believe the children are our future . . .’

actually, Miliband’s bribe is more dire Straits than Whitney Houston. ‘ Get your money for nothing and your chips for free.’

Where does he think all this money is coming from? yet again, Miliband has demonstrated he has no grasp of life outside the bubble.

He obviously hasn’t stopped to consider the burden this will place on small businesses. His Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Martha Reeves, who is expecting her second child and therefore will be one of the lucky beneficiaries, said that ‘good employers like asda, national Grid and Citibank’ already give more than the statutory paternity leave.

Giant outfits like asda and Citibank can afford to absorb the extra staff costs.

Presumably, though, that means those businesses which offer only the current minimum are ‘bad employers’ who must be brought to heel.

labour says small firms will be reimbursed for paternity pay. but that will involve yet another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to claim it back, on top of the hassle of trying to arrange temporary cover for key workers.

How the hell is any small business owner expected to make long-term plans? if this crazy scheme gets implemented, it will be the fifth change to paternity/maternity leave arrangements in the past decade. and whoever writes the final cheque, it will still have to come out of our taxes.

labour looks on business as a branch of the social services. Miliband seems to believe companies exist simply to provide jobs and benefits for employees, while paying taxes to fund ‘world- class public services’ — ie: sinecures for labour voters and subscriptions for trades unions.

AlTHOUGH they haven’t gone quite so far as Miliband, all the main party leaders are enthusiastic about extending ‘shared parenting’ rights, probably because none of them has ever run a proper business.

again, i refer you to what i wrote last June: ‘does anyone really believe that today’s generation of interchangeable, identikit male politicians play as much of a handson role in bringing up baby as they like to pretend?

‘Most of their wives earn such large salaries they can afford to employ nannies to shoulder the childcare burden. boasting about doing the school run and being photographed ostentatiously pushing a buggy is a fantasy peddled for public consumption because they think it appeals to women voters.

‘Out in the real world, the famous work/life balance is about going out to work to balance the family budget. it’s not about paying daddy to stay at home so that Mummy can pop out for a ladies’ lunch at The ivy followed by a little light PR consultancy.’

i also wondered about the impact all this would have on the self-employed.

One question which wasn’t put to Miliband yesterday was: where does this leave modern families such as the two gay fathers of the world’s first ‘twiplets’ — three babies by three different surrogate mothers, as featured in the Mail on Saturday.

Will both of them be entitled to a month’s paid paternity leave? and do their professional ‘ baby mothers’ each qualify for a year’s maternity leave?

On second thoughts, it’s probably best not to ask.