The source added that childcare experts recommend one parent stay at home for the first few months of the placement to make it a success.Mr Byers will also confirm moves to entitle about 450,000 new fathers a year to two weeks’ paid leave. They will have to have been with their employer for six months and take the fortnight in a single block within two months of their child’s birth.Small businesses will be able to reclaim the amount they pay and will receive extra compensation.The DTI source said: “Women are more likely to return to work if their partner has taken paternity leave. This new right will give fathers the opportunity to support their partner when they most need it but with minimum disruption to their employer’s business.”The moves were announced in the Budget by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, in March. Mr Byers will publish two documents that explain how the plan will work in practice.. Sir John Mills, the archetypal symbol of heroic spirit in countless British films, is to take on another starring role – for the Labour Party.

Sir John Mills, the archetypal symbol of heroic spirit in countless British films, is to take on another starring role ­ for the Labour Party. The actor, 93, is to help win over the “grey vote”.The lifelong Tory appears to have been won over to Labour after meeting the Prime Minister at a charity function.His final decision came when he met Mo Mowlam, the Cabinet Office Minister, at a party at Admiralty Arch in London last month.Finishing touches are being put to Sir John’s appearance at a high-profile event ­ probably a speech by the Prime Minister in Manchester next week.A spokesman for the actor said: “I can confirm that, health allowing, he will be appearing with Tony Blair at a meeting during the election campaign. Labour knows it faces a struggle to hold on to the pensioner votes it won from the Tories in 1997, after the party’s public relations disaster of increasing the basic state pension last year by just 75p a week.. The Labour manifesto will include a firm commitment to change the law to allow all-women shortlists for future parliamentary elections. The Labour manifesto will include a firm commitment to change the law to allow all-women shortlists for future parliamentary elections.The move, announced yesterday by Baroness Jay of Paddington, the minister for Women, comes after predictions that the number of female MPs will drop after the election. All-women shortlists were scrapped in 1998 after a court ruled that they breached the Sex Discrimination Act. But Lady Jay said the party intended to legislate to write the concept of women-only shortlists into electoral law.

She said the change would allow parties to take “positive action to have more women candidates”.”That is something which happens across Europe in a great many political parties,” she said.Although she is leaving the Government at the election, she said she wanted the change introduced as quickly as possible. She was unable to say, however, whether it would happen in time for next year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.At the previous election, 101 of the 119 female MPs elected to Westminster were for Labour seats. However, both numbers are expected to fall as retiring women MPs are replaced by men and as a preponderance of men continue to be chosen for safe and winnable seats.Local parties have selected only 11 women to fight Labour’s top 50 target seats. If the total of women MPs drops, it will be the first time that has happened for 27 years.Lady Jay admitted that Labour constituency activists remained sceptical about choosing a woman as their candidate. She told BBC 1’s On the Record: “What we had hoped was that, given the success of the all-women shortlists procedure before the 1997 election, that somehow the culture of selection might change.