Asked by: Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of extending statutory maternity allowance to adopting parents.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), and Maternity Allowance (MA), are paid to women to replace earnings to help them take time off work before and after their baby is born. They are primarily paid in the interests of women and their babies’ health and wellbeing. It would not therefore be appropriate to extend maternity benefits to adopting parents.
Statutory Adoption Pay is available for employees who take time off to adopt a child. Prospective adopters and children they intend to adopt are also entitled to an assessment of their family’s needs. This includes a range of support including discretionary means-tested financial support, advice, information, counselling, and support services.
Asked by: Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the running costs of the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency were last year; and how much those parents who are the subject of cases administered by both organisations paid in maintenance in the same period.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The cost of running the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency for 2017/18 was £221.73m (excluding income) or £199.67m (net of income.) This is an Operational delivery cost only, and does not include any apportionment of DWP overheads.
Please note:
The amounts of maintenance paid by parents in relation to cases administered by the CSA are published in table 4 of Child Support Agency quarterly summary of statistics: December 2017 available on line at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-support-agency-quarterly-summary-of-statistics-december-2017. Similarly the amounts of maintenance paid by parents in relation to cases administered by the CMS are published in table 8 of Child Maintenance Service: Aug 2013 to Dec 2017 (experimental) available on line at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-aug-2013-to-dec-2017-experimental