The Liberal Democrats have said they would double statutory shared parental pay (ShPP) and extend the amount of leave new parents can take if the party form the next government. Speaking at the party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth, education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said not enough men were taking leave, while many “simply can’t afford” to spend time with their babies. ShPP is paid at a rate of £172.48 a week or 90% of the claimant’s average weekly earnings. Under plans unveiled this weekend, this would double to £350 a week to ease the financial burden on families. Shared parental leave (SPL) would also be increased from 37 weeks to 46 weeks. “We need to persuade more Kens in this world to take a short break from doing beach and head on back to the Mojo Dojo Casa House,” Wilson told the conference in a reference to box-office smash movie Barbie. “But I know that many dads do want to spend more time with their kids, they just simply can’t afford it.
“So Liberal Democrats will turbocharge parental leave, doubling pay so that new parents don’t have to rush back to work if they don’t want to, extending it to cover the first full year of a child’s life.” The party, which launching a suite of policies focused on education and childcare, also said it wants to expand shared parental leave to include self-employed workers. Wilson also announced a pledge to hand schools and colleges £390m a year to offer free small-group tutoring to 1.75 million on Saturday. Kicking off the conference, she accused the government of “pulling the plug” on school-based tutoring over its decision not to fund the national tutoring programme beyond this year. The Liberal Democrats are planning to use the conference, which could be the last before the next general election, to agree on policies to win over“blue wall” voters in the south of England. Former party leader Tim Farron also announced that the Illegal Immigration Act would be “ripped up on day one” of a Lib Dem government. The Westmorland and Lonsdale MP accused the Tories of being willing to put “victims of modern slavery at even greater risk if they think it will give them shallow political advantage”. “We will scrap the absolutely appalling Illegal Migration Act in full – no caveats, no excuses, no cowardly backtracking. That act gets ripped up on day one of a Liberal Democrat administration,” he said. Farron also accused Labour of “slipping back into New Labour habits” and being “too scared of tabloids to risk being seen to be on the side of those in desperate need of sanctuary and liberation”. Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has said his party would set up a new police unit to tackle illegal migration and would seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers who come to Britain.