Ten years after it was first introduced, the UK’s Shared Parental Leave (SPL) policy is under fire. A lot of people think that it hasn’t been successful in achieving its initial goals. Originally, the system was intended to provide a way for both parents to take time off from work following their child’s birth. Because we are not making adequate progress, experts have recently dubbed the last decade the “lost decade.”
Baroness JoJo Penn in particular worked with then Prime Minister Theresa May when the policy was created in 2010. She is speaking out about her disappointment regarding the results. Ten years on, it’s clear shared parental leave is not delivering on its original aims, ” she said. That’s a huge improvement for the estimated half a million new parents every year who experience needless delays. They deserve immediate access to the right leave, for both parents, when they welcome a new baby.
The SPL policy was more formally brought onto the agenda by Jo Swinson in 2015 during her time as Minister for Employment Relations. Separated from that great intention, Swinson has done a little testing to raise alarm about the policy’s efficacy. She highlighted an enormous oversight in requiring mothers to “donate their leave to fathers.” This new limitation is extremely punitive, making the law all but inaccessible to most families.
New analysis of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) data by IPPR reveals some particularly shocking trends. In 2024-25, 95% of claims for SPL were made by fathers in the UK’s top income bracket, those earning more than the average salary of £37,800. In 2015, a mere 10 percent of the most common claims were filed by medium or less well-paid fathers. Unfortunately, that figure has dropped to only one-in-twenty.
This year, the government’s announcement of an 18-month review of the parental leave system was welcomed with cautious optimism. The House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee warned that merely “tinkering around the edges of a broken system will let down working parents.”
Between 2020 and 2025, NHS England, Scotland and NHS Wales received 274,755 requests for parental leave. Of these, just 4,264 were for Shared Parental Leave. The 2023 evaluation found that less than 1% of eligible mothers and 5% of eligible fathers used the SPL.
As experts such as George Gabriel have noted, this problem is wider than just the families in question. A decade on, we again find that shared parental leave primarily benefits the most affluent families, concentrated in the south-east. In doing so, he misses the mark in helping the majority of working fathers and non-birthing parents,” he said. He further elaborated on how the disparity in access to parental leave has become a class issue: In the ensuing decade, access to time with newborns has become a pronounced class divide. Yet today’s typical fathers are increasingly being priced out of spending those essential early weeks and months with their newborns.
The gulf between policy vision and practical implementation has caused many to wonder if government support for the SPL movement will last. Jo Swinson emphasized this disconnect, stating, “It’s definitely a policy that hasn’t achieved its potential, partly because it hasn’t had the kind of backing, the energy, the encouragement of a government that believed in it.”
Given these developments, Kate Dearden—now the Minister for Employment Rights—admitted there was room for improvement. She stated, “No parent should have to worry that they’ll miss out on spending quality time with their kids, and we need to do more to help them achieve this.”
As stakeholders continue to wait for the results of the government’s review, many fear that significant change could take a long time to happen. Baroness JoJo Penn cautioned against complacency: “The case for change is overwhelming, and at the moment I worry that the government has another year for its review but we won’t get any real change at the end of it.”
Calls for a serious go big or go home approach instead of nibbling on the edges have resonated among supporters & advocates of parental leave reform. Even Jo Swinson was on message when she declared, “Let’s not go for an ineffectual small pudding. Change nothing over 10 years, let’s be clear. We need to drive a big leap forward!”