Toe-curlingly bad jokes (“I’m reading a book about anti-gravity, it’s impossible to put down”) are not the preserve of fathers, but as a demographic, dads are widely recognised for their unique comic talents.
Which is why on Thursday, dozens of MPs, many of them dad-joke specialists, will tell groan-worthy gags in the House of Commons to highlight the “real joke” of paternity leave in the UK.
MPs will read out jokes collected from a competition organised by the paternity rights campaign group the Dad Shift and the construction community On the Tools in a debate that takes place a day after International Men’s Day.
The message behind the tongue-in-cheek stunt is serious, said George Gabriel, a co-founder of the Dad Shift. UK paternity leave, at £187.18 a week, is the least-generous in Europe, with the UK ranked 40th out of 43 countries by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The statutory offer accounts for 1.9% of all government spending on parental leave, with the rest spent on maternity leave. Self-employed co-parents do not qualify for state support.
Gabriel argued that low- and middle-earners were being shut out of spending vital time with their newborns. According to the group’s analysis of HMRC data, released to coincide with the debate, 90% of paternity leave in 2024-25 was claimed by fathers in the UK’s top half of earners – those who generally make more than £37,800 a year – and 95% of claims for shared parental leave (SPL) were made by fathers or partners in the top half of earners.
“It’s clear that who can afford to spend time with their kids is becoming a class issue,” said Gabriel. “A system that gives dads less than half the minimum wage is not designed to be used by working fathers and it’s outrageous that these folk are priced out of even the paltry two weeks offered by the UK. It’s a bad joke.”
A survey of 2,000 people for Dadshift by Opinium found that 64% of fathers were concerned that most paternity leave was claimed by higher-than-average earners, while 58% agreed that the question of who could afford to spend time with their kids was becoming “a class issue”.
The average wage in the UK is £37,800 a year, and only 9.5% of the 216,000 people who took paternity leave in 2024-25 earned less than that, according to the analysis. It found that of 22,700 SPL claims, 1,200 (about 5%) were from the bottom half of earners, with no claims made from dads and partners in the lowest 20% of earners.
According to the campaign group’s research, the figures also show “huge geographic disparities”, with the south-east and London receiving as much in SPL payments as Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the north-west, the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber combined.
Alistair Strathern, the Labour MP for Hitchin, said the number of MPs willing to stand up and be laughed at was indicative of a shift in parliament, with more fathers willing to call for better parental rights. He pointed to the government’s review of parental leave, announced in July and expected to take about 18 months, as proof his party was listening to dads.
Strathern said: “There’s been a heartening recognition from the frontbench about the current inequities in the system, which almost hardwires a gendered approach to parenting.
“Look, we’re obviously doing it at a time when there’s a huge amount of constraints, in terms of the wider economic picture and the fiscal picture for the Treasury, but the recognition of the problem and the desire to do something about it are there.”
The debate, organised by Josh Newbury MP, a father of two, will also be attended by the Liberal Democrat MP Freddie Van Mierlo, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fatherhood (favourite joke: I used to hate facial hair, then it grew on me), who said: “I backed this debate because we need to send a message loud and clear: this isn’t good enough and something needs to be done.”
Top three jokes
-
Winner: I gave my handyman a to-do list, but he only finished items one, three and five. Turns out he only does odd jobs.
-
Runner-up one: I went shopping and someone threw a block of cheese at me. I said: “That’s not very mature.”
-
Runner-up two: When I was a young boy I wanted to be a Gregorian monk. But I never got the chants.
