Male ministers need to start taking shared parental leave as a “normal” part of life in politics, the UK’s first maternity-cover cabinet minister has said.
Chloe Smith has stood in as the science and technology secretary and helped to set up the new department while Michelle Donelan went on maternity leave.
Smith will return to the back benches on Thursday but said that she hoped her stint in government would encourage other ministers — particularly men — to take advantage of employment rights that have never been the norm in politics.
She said: “I think actually we have an opportunity here to reflect what many families up and down the country do and that paternity leave and shared parental leave should be a normal concept
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