'We are getting punished for being self-employed'

A carpenter and father of a toddler has called on the government to give self-employed men paid paternity leave.

Dom Edington, who has a two-year-old baby girl, told BBC Politics East that men should have parity with women when it comes to paid leave.

Rules in the UK allow new fathers and second parents in full-time employment to take up to two weeks off work but fathers cannot receive statutory paternity leave and pay if they are self-employed or earn less than £125 a week.

A committee of MPs in 2025 called the UK's parental leave system "one of the worst in the developed world" with "fundamental flaws". The government said it was reviewing parental leave.

Edington, 34, from Lowestoft who works in Norfolk and Suffolk, told BBC Politics East's Your Shout segment he started work as a carpenter when he was 15 and had been self-employed for nearly five years.

"I've now got a two-and-a-half-year-old baby girl. The best thing that has ever happened to me.

"For us self-employed guys there is no paternity pay. We don't get any help. We don't get any support.

"There's maternity pay where the females get money even if they are self-employed, but there's nothing for us."

He said other countries in Europe provide more support for self-employer dads.

"If you look at other countries, whether it is Norway or Sweden, Germany or Italy and Spain - the support they have for self-employed guys is through the roof compared to us," he said.

"We are getting punished for being self-employed. Absolutely zero help.

"My message to the government is to give us a bit more support.

"We want to be there for our families. For example if our partner has gone through a difficult birth you want to be there to support them, but we can't because we have to rush back to work."

Last Monday campaign group The Dad Shift lobbied MPs for paternity leave for the self-employed.

They said extending paternity leave to the self-employed would benefit lower and middle income fathers who get no income protection when taking time off to care for a newborn babies.

The group said it is estimated that one in three fathers in the construction industry took no time off when their last child was born.

George Gabriel, co-founder of The Dad Shift, said: "Your average tradesman can build a crib in less than the time they get off to bond with the baby that'll sleep in it."

He said it was unacceptable that self-employed man were "left totally unsupported in one of the most important and challenging times of their lives."

He called on the Labour government to "fix" the situation.

Labour MP for Hitchin, Alistair Strathern, who is co-chair of the Labour group for men and boys, said: "It's an absolute joke that self-employed dads get less time off to get to know their little one than it took to conceive them.

"This government is rightly on the side of decent working blokes and closing this loophole is exactly the kind of change that would show we mean business"

The government said its "parental leave and pay review is under way and will conclude in early 2027".

Employment rights minister Kate Dearden told Parliament on Thursday: "We know that the parental leave system needs to be improved."

She the government did "recognise that the current system does not do enough to support the many dads and partners who want to be hands-on and actively involved in caring for their children".

BBC Politics East will be broadcast on Sunday 15 March at 10:00 GMT on BBC One in the East of England, and will be available after broadcast on BBC iPlayer.

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