The UK’s justice minister Harriett Harmen has called for flexible working practices to be more commonly implemented across the country.

Ms Harman is convinced that the option to work from home should be open to more employees than is currently the case and that the government should be doing more to establish a flexible workforce in Britain.

And politicians should also be working harder to give parents the professional flexibility they need to spend time with their children.

"What we’ve done is we’ve introduced a right for the parent to request flexible working. But I think that we should see it the other way round," she told the BBC’s Politics Show.

"I think that we should be saying that you’ve got a right to work flexibly, unless the employer can show that it would be unpractical for their business."

A report from the equal opportunities commission recently concluded that the UK is lagging behind some of its continental counterparts when it comes to implementing flexible working practices.