Unpaid leave

A. The 1996 Parental Leave Directive only guarantees leave for each pregnancy and not for the number of children born. So under European law parents of twins do not have a right to twice the amount of parental leave, and parents of triplets do not have a right to three times the amount of parental leave and so on.

However, it was fortunate that the then Labour government in trying to be “family friendly” interpreted the EU directive more generously than this.

Section 14 of the 1999 Maternity and Parental Leave etc Regulations says that an employee is entitled to 13 weeks’ leave in respect of any individual child until that child’s fifth birthday. So your member is entitled to 26 weeks’ leave.

Provided that an employee has one year’s service and gives 21 days’ notice, they can take up to four weeks’ unpaid leave a year (eight weeks’ in the case of your member with twins) — and more if any child is disabled.

Unfortunately, if the employer can show that is has sufficient business reasons, it can postpone the leave for up to six months.