Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse, and I congratulate the Petitions Committee and all the petitioners on bringing this issue forward for debate.

I will home in on the specific issue of self-employed adopters. There is real inequality built into the system, where self-employed adopters are not able to access the pay or even the allowances that parents can. When someone takes a new child into their home through adoption, there are significant challenges, and it is important that they can build stability, attachment and security for that child. But without the resources to do that, many adopters have made the positive choice not to adopt a second child, and others in the process are not able to embark further on the journey. That is denying children access to a family, when we have so many children—over 80,000—in care at the moment. It is absolutely vital that we change the system to ensure that we give those parents, at least, equivalent and sufficient adoption pay.

Therefore, I ask that the Government engage with and listen to the work done on this issue by organisations such as Adoption UK and Home for Good. They have identified that although there are voluntary arrangements at the moment, they are simply not working, and we need statutory arrangements for adopters. Only 10% of adopters had their social workers tell them about the voluntary arrangements to access resources from a local authority, which are given on a discretionary basis. In fact, we found that 34% of local authorities did not even have a policy for how they would give that pay to adoptive parents. It is not for local authorities; we need statutory provision in place, and I trust that the Minister will take on that cause.

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[Andrew Western]

We will need to see what comes out of the review, but we are committed to setting out a roadmap to change as a result of the review. I understand my hon. Friend’s point and note his desire, and that of other Members, for action to be taken as swiftly as possible.

I appreciate that parental leave and pay are vital to new mums and dads, giving them the space to spend time together as a new family. The first months and moments are critical in ensuring that a child is happy, healthy and well adjusted. It is something that runs deeper than pound signs and percentage points. Bringing a child into the world or into our home is a major event in anyone’s life. It is one that parents should enjoy free from the stresses of the workplace. However, we know that the current system is not working for everyone.

It is almost 40 years since statutory maternity pay was introduced for working women in 1987. It is half a century since maternity leave was introduced in 1975, and almost 75 years since the start of maternity allowance in 1948. In the years since, the world of work and the world at large have changed beyond recognition. Gone are the age-old stereotypes about men belonging in the workplace and women in the home. The lines between home and work have never been more blurred. As times have changed, there have been tweaks and updates: paternity leave and adoption leave in 2003; shared parental leave and pay in 2014; and neonatal care leave just this year. But, like a road network that evolves over time, the process is no longer as simple to navigate. We need something that is purpose-built for people’s journeys today.

In July, in partnership with the Department for Business and Trade, we launched the parental leave and pay review. It is time to go back to first principles, to work out exactly what the system needs to deliver and for whom—mums, dads and others—and to consider all the options before mapping out a new way forward. That starts with our remembering why maternity pay was introduced in the first place. It was primarily about the health and safety of women and their babies during pregnancy and in the months following childbirth. That is why, as the review progresses, the first objective that we have in mind for the parental leave and pay system, although not the only one, is ensuring that it supports maternal health by making sure women have enough money and time off work to stay healthy—physically and mentally—during the latter stages of their pregnancy and while recovering from birth.

Secondly, the approach needs to promote economic growth. When we give more new parents the freedom to stay and progress in work, it is not just mums, dads and kids who benefit; employers, too, benefit from keeping parents’ skills and experience. At present, just over half of new mothers go back to their old job following the birth of their child. We want to build a system in which every mother feels supported if they make that choice. New figures show that five years after a first birth, the average mother’s earnings will have dropped by more than £1,000 a month. Mothers deserve better.

Our third objective is to help children to get the best start in life by giving new parents the resources and space to give the care and attention their new arrivals need. Fourthly, we need to support parents’ childcare choices so that parents can balance care and work in a way that works for them, enabling co-parenting and reflecting the realities of modern work. Ultimately, we want a system that is fairer and easier to use, and that works better for parents and employers.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for his speech. Will he ensure that there is a matrix over the Government’s objective that measures inequality in family life and ensures that we close the inequality gap so that parents experiencing the greatest deprivation benefit the most from the policy?