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Change Your Life! |
Blair says he will reduce public duties to help wife with the new baby |
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News
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April 10, 2000
LONDON, APR 9 (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair will not take full paternity leave when his fourth child is born next month, but will cut back on engagements for a while to help his wife, Cherie, a Sunday newspaper said.
"I don't ever stop being prime minister," Blair was quoted as telling the weekly Observer newspaper. "Even when I am on holiday I do several hours of work a day."
"But of course I want to spend more time with Cherie when the kid is born to help out and I will do that," he was quoted as saying in Friday's interview. "I don't know if that makes (it) paternity leave ... but it is just the common sense of the situation." There was no indication of how long he would reduce his schedule.
The Blairs already have two teen-age sons and a 12-year-old daughter, and expressed surprise and delight in November at the discovery they were expecting another child. The prime minister is 46, and his wife, a successful lawyer, is 45.
Britain's tabloid newspapers began to pressure Blair to take some leave after Cherie Blair last month praised Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen for taking six days' parental leave after the birth of his second daughter.
Parliament will be in session throughout May, and no recess is planned for the baby's arrival. The prime minister has taken vacations, but usually only for a week or so.
"The important thing is to help Cherie and the baby. I obviously will try as much as possible to cut down in that period what I'm doing," The Observer quoted Blair as saying. "But I have to run the country, that still has to go on."
The newspaper said Blair also appealed for a degree of privacy after the baby's arrival.
"We have absolutely no desire to be treated like the royal family," he was quoted as saying.
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