In July 2025, the Labour Government committed to a once in a generation review of parental leave, honouring Labour’s Manifesto pledge to “best support working families”. The Parental Leave Review represents a rare opportunity for the Government to introduce substantial reforms to our outdated system of parental leave. It couldn’t come sooner, as the UK is one of the ‘least family friendly’ countries in Europe (UNICEF). Never have we had this opportunity to truly change lives for parents, children and families when it comes to parental leave – we’re unlikely to get it again.

Led by the Fawcett Society and Movember, organisations across the women’s, men’s and family sectors have come together with academics and experts to call for a parental leave system that works for all families. We deserve a system that doesn’t push parents into poverty, respects the work of taking care of a new baby with proper pay, and supports equality, not gender stereotypes.

Dom Edington is a carpenter from Lowestoft. He started on the tools at 15, has been self-employed for around five years, and has a young daughter. Speaking to BBC Politics East earlier this year, he explained that self-employed dads like him get no paternity pay and no support, and that when his partner needed him at home he had no real choice but to get back to work. In his words, self-employed workers are "getting punished for being self-employed".

He is not an outlier. He is describing the standard experience of a large part of our workforce.

A gap that lands squarely on construction

An employed father or second parent can currently take up to two weeks of statutory paternity leave, paid at £194.32 week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. It is not generous by international standards. But a self-employed father gets nothing at all. 

Because self-employment is far more common in construction than across the economy as a whole, that gap falls disproportionately on our industry. A poll by On The Tools found roughly one in three fathers working in construction took no time off at all when their last child was born, with cost the reason most often given.

That is a bricklayer back on site three days after his partner came home from hospital. It is a self-employed site manager taking calls from the maternity ward because there is no cover and no income if he stops. Most of us in this industry know someone who has done exactly that, and many of us have done it ourselves.

Why this is an industry issue, not just a family one

It's a safety and wellbeing issue. A sleep-deprived new parent working at height, operating plant or driving between sites is a risk to themselves and to everyone around them. We spend a great deal of effort on fatigue, mental health and site culture. Financially forcing new fathers back to work within days of a birth cuts directly across that work.

It's a recruitment and retention issue. The industry needs to bring in tens of thousands of new workers and keep the ones it has. We are asking people to choose construction over sectors where two weeks of paid leave is a floor rather than a ceiling, and we are asking women to build careers in a sector where caregiving is still assumed to be their problem alone. Reform makes that case easier to make.

It's a fairness issue. Self-employment is not a fringe arrangement in construction. It is one of the ways the industry organises itself. A statutory system built almost entirely around PAYE employment leaves a structural part of our workforce outside it.

The cost of closing the paternity gap for self-employed fathers has been estimated by campaigners at somewhere between £13.6m and £37.7m a year, depending on take-up. Set against the scale of the construction sector and the cost of the skills shortage, that is a small price for a change that would reach tens of thousands of families a year.

What happens next

Movember and its coalition of supporters have brought together a set of policy asks put to the government's Parental Leave Review. The coalition behind them was convened by the Fawcett Society and Movember and, and now includes organisations across the women's, men's and family sectors, several major trade unions, and academics from more than a dozen universities.

In those asks we are calling for Six weeks of non-transferable paternity leave, paid at 90% of average weekly earnings and parental leave as a genuine day-one right, available regardless of earnings level or employment status. See the full list of asks here. 

The Parental Leave Review is now under way and is expected to report in the coming months. This is a rare opportunity. Governments do not revisit the architecture of parental leave often, and the current system has been widely criticised, including by a committee of MPs who described it as among the worst in the developed world.

Amanda Martin MP was quoted saying “Right now, self-employed tradespeople are paying in National Insurance contributions and being told they’re paying into a system that will be there for them when they need it. Yet when a baby arrives, one of the most important moments in anyone’s life, self-employed dads get absolutely nothing. Not a day’s support”

Employers don't need to wait for legislation. If you run a business in this sector, look at what your own paternity and shared parental policies offer, and at whether site-based and subcontracted staff are practically able to use them. 

And if you have a story like Dom's, we'd like to hear it. Evidence from the people doing the work is what makes the case land.