Why the fuss about paternity leave?

'Paternity payment pays lip-service to the idea that fathers are important without making any threat to "Britain's bosses" '

It doesn't take a great deal to anger "Britain's bosses". This week they are apparently fulminating over the Prime Minister's pledge to offer two weeks of paid paternity leave worth £60.20 to the fathers of new-born babies. Not only, say "Britain's bosses", will this cost the Government £100m, it will also cost industry an absolute fortune in expensive replacement staff.

It doesn't take a great deal to anger "Britain's bosses". This week they are apparently fulminating over the Prime Minister's pledge to offer two weeks of paid paternity leave worth £60.20 to the fathers of new-born babies. Not only, say "Britain's bosses", will this cost the Government £100m, it will also cost industry an absolute fortune in expensive replacement staff.

This seems rather bogus. There are about 700,000 babies born in Britain each year, and the figure of £100m would only be reached if this 700,000 included no multiple births, no fathers already at home caring for other children, none of "Britain's bosses" (who like Tony Blair are able to take a fortnight off on full pay if they want to), no lone mothers, and no employees for whom, at a time of great expense, the incentive of £60.20 is too little to allow them to forego their wage.

Nor would it include employees who know perfectly well that a decision to take paternity leave would be frowned upon by their "British boss", those men living on unearned income, unemployed fathers, retired fathers, self-employed people who organise their work in such a way that they would expect to be with their family, companies that offer paternity leave packages already, and men who would rather be at work than care for their baby and its mother anyway.

All of which would be quite a notable national coincidence. In reality, it would be quite astounding if even half of this projected 700,000 took up their new right. Paternity pay is unlikely to cost the Government any more than £40m, a fact of which our prudent leaders are likely to be well aware.

And while some newspapers report of "the private misgivings of some cabinet ministers at the huge potential cost", the fact is that this is a subject of which cabinet ministers have little experience. Mr Blair may have decided when it came to the crunch that he would take a few days off after all. But last week Yvette Cooper became the first-ever serving minister to take maternity leave, never mind paternity leave, and she's not even in the Cabinet. If cabinet ministers would simply look at their own experience, they would see that the paternity leave uptake is not likely to be such a deluge.

And this huge cost to "Britain's bosses". Much of the above is applicable here too. Since such a huge proportion of the workforce is now self-employed, the number of people for whom replacement staff have to be found is likely to be a good deal fewer than the number claiming the government leave. Of those, many will be expected to arrange work before their leave, so that it can be delegated to colleagues, who may or may not then organise someone on work experience or a low rate of pay to take on some filing or photocopying at the end of the delegation chain. In these cases the employer is gaining, not losing, money from the arrangement.

Overall, this initiative will not cost "Britain's bosses" much at all, and will at least ensure that their offices and shop floors are not congested with exhausted and distracted new dads.

So why are the bosses so hostile? Why is the British Chamber of Commerce declaring: "This government is schizophrenic. On the one hand it is trying to make us become competitive, while on the other hand it is bringing in constraints stopping us from being productive."

Simply because "Britain's bosses" are threatened by every piece of legislation that treats the population as humans with rights rather than as economic units to be exploited without "constraint". They make a huge fuss about every little step towards humanity and away from exploitation because they constantly fear that one step will be followed by another, until on one awful day, people will start putting their lives and their families first and their jobs and salaries second. And wouldn't those be weird priorities? Not for "Britain's bosses".

Because this strange collective behave en masse like non-people, so insensitive that they cannot even see that far from the Government being schizophrenic in its opposition to them, it is schizophrenic in its courtship of them.

The Government is more than aware of the "many stresses and strains in modern family life" that Mr Blair spoke of in his speech to 3,000 Labour spring conference delegates in Glasgow at the weekend. He said that paternity pay was vital "because a child needs the loving care and attention of both parents - and because fathers want to share the joy and burden of looking after a child". He went on to say that while the Government couldn't cure all the stresses and strains "we can help, and we will". But he must know as well that what is being offered - the option of a £120 payment in order to ensure that in a child's lifetime he will get to spend two weeks more with his father than otherwise - is pitifully inadequate as a weapon in fighting our skewed work-life balance.

He must know too that while in theory this payment helps all fathers, in practice it will be useful for only some. Pegging the payment so low ensures that few workers will find the payment compensation for the time they lose from work. For those used to a higher income, the mortgage will still have to be paid. Yet pegging it any higher would unleash greater vitriol from "Britain's bosses".

The truth is that the paternity payment pays lip-service to the idea that fathers are important in the upbringing of children, without actually making any threat to the workings of "Britain's bosses" - or to much of a threat to the Treasury - at all. The principle is addressed by this initiative far more than the practicalities. But even so "Britain's bosses" are outraged. They despise the principle just as much as they despise any threat to their profits, if not more.

Meanwhile, the Labour government represents an electorate who say that their greatest concern is the work-life balance. Its own balance is just as tricky to achieve as that of the population. It must be seen to be promoting policies which help working families, without placing too much of a burden on either the employers or the taxpayer. The way to do this is to make fathers feel they have choices, but to make it difficult for them to plump for the ones they would really like to take. In that sense, the Government and the rest of "Britain's bosses" are singing off the very same song sheet. No wonder the captains of industry are willing only to add a chorus of disapproval.

That's their job now. To overstate the generosity of the Government, thus making it look a great deal more fearless and radical than it really is, while at the same time warning the wage earners that they'd better watch their step and make the choice that "Britain's bosses" want them to. And the "stresses and strains of modern life" roll on, hardly hindered at all.

d.orr@independent.co.uk