Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the economic benefits of the current bereavement leave entitlement.

The Government recognises that the death of a child is a tragic event. There are around 7,500 child deaths a year in Great Britain, including around 3,000 stillbirths. This is devasting for the parents involved and this is why the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy introduced Parental Bereavement Leave and Pay in April this year.

At the time we introduced this entitlement we published an Impact Assessment (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/249/impacts) which contains a cost benefit analysis of the policy, setting out the costs to the Exchequer and business as well as the monetary benefits to employees and business and the social benefit to employees.