Flexible hours rights extended

More people are to be given the right to flexible working hours in a Government bid to get more women back in the workplace. Currently, only people with children aged 17 and under, their relatives and some carers are allowed to request flexible hours from their employers which suit their personal needs. But Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is to announce an extension to these rights, meaning workers can ask for flexible hours if they want to help others with their childcare. He will say such changes in the law can draw some of the one million women missing from the economy back into the workplace.

“This isn’t a new problem: despite rising since the 1960s, female employment has stalled over the last decade,” he will say when he makes the announcement on Tuesday. It is, however, a problem we can no longer afford. Just as working women drove up living standards in the latter half of the 20th century, all the evidence suggests that living standards in the first half of the 21st century will need to be driven by working women once again and this absence of women from our economy is costing us dearly.”

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