Retail leads the way on paternity leave as government urged to improve offer

M&S and Tesco are among employers offering six weeks, highlighting gap with construction and agriculture

“Being able to take six weeks’ paid paternity leave, flexibly, made a huge difference to me and my family, giving me the time to support my partner and settle into being a new parent,” said Marks & Spencer employee Joe Erskine.

The food and clothing retailer increased its paternity leave offering from two to six weeks at full pay in 2024, meaning Erskine benefited from the new policy when his second child was born 17 months ago.

M&S and Tesco are among the retailers leading the way in offering enhanced paternity leave to their staff, new research has shown, highlighting the widening gap between the more family-friendly policies offered to new fathers working in the retail sector compared with those in construction, manufacturing and agriculture.

Both companies offer six weeks at full pay to employees, far outstripping the statutory two-week minimum paternity leave offer and making them among the most generous of UK blue-chip companies listed on the FTSE 100, according to figures compiled by campaign group The Dad Shift and Ian Dinwiddy of Inspiring Dads.

Privately owned companies Ikea, Lego and Virgin Media O2 now also offer more weeks of fully paid leave to new fathers.

The enhanced paternity leave offered by retailers including Asda, Waitrose and Lidl in recent years means that just five employers are responsible for upgrading parental leave for nearly 650,000 workers.

Retail businesses and the shop workers’ union Usdaw held a roundtable discussion in parliament, hosted by Labour MP Connor Rand, to discuss the transformation in working parents’ lives brought in by changes to parental leave.

Rand, who was a researcher for Usdaw prior to his election to parliament in 2024, said the entitlement was crucial for his family: “Through the ups and downs, I could bond with my son and support my partner because of paternity leave. Too many dads in our country can’t do this. That’s bad for them, bad for their partner and bad for their children. It must change.”

Campaigners have long argued that the UK has one of the least generous paternity leave offers in the world, ranked 40th out of 43 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Over two decades after paternity leave rights were introduced in Britain, they argue the country has fallen behind and now has the least generous entitlement in Europe.

Employed fathers in the UK are entitled to two weeks’ statutory paternity leave paid at £194.32 a week, or 90% of their average weekly earnings, whichever amount is lower, totalling less than half the national living wage.

Many companies offer enhanced paternity leave by topping up the statutory offer to full salary, in some cases for a longer period of time.

However, there is a growing disparity between different sectors of the economy. Analysis by The Dad Shift found that the construction sector employs around one in 10 working men, but only accounts for about one in 15 recipients of statutory paternity pay.

This could partly be because some construction workers are self-employed and currently have no entitlement to paid paternity leave, as is also the case for many of Britain’s agricultural workers, the majority of whom are self-employed.

Construction company JCB only offers two weeks’ full pay in paternity leave, although this has been increased from the three days it previously offered.

Engineering firm Rolls-Royce, which makes jet engines for planes, turbines for ships and small nuclear power plants, has a workforce that is more than 80% male but currently only offers two weeks’ fully paid leave.

More than 100 Labour MPs have called on Andy Burnham in recent weeks to commit to improving the UK’s paternity leave in the upcoming budget, warning that lowest-paid fathers are the hardest hit by inadequate paternity leave provision.

They are calling for the introduction of six weeks of paternity leave paid at 90% of earnings, capped at £1,200 a week, with the offer extended to self-employed fathers. An 18-month government review of the UK’s parental leave system is expected to report later this year.