Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what financial support is available to parents after the stillbirth of a child.

Government recognises that stillbirth and neonatal death are extremely sad and difficult for parents and families.

To protect a woman’s health and wellbeing, where qualifying conditions are met, a woman is eligible for maternity payments in the sad event that her baby is stillborn from the start of the 24th week of pregnancy or if her baby sadly dies shortly after birth at any point in the pregnancy.

There are two maternity payments available: Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) paid by employers to qualifying employed women and Maternity Allowance (MA) paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to eligible women (including the self-employed and those employed women who cannot get SMP).

Both SMP and MA are paid for 39 weeks. For SMP, the first six weeks are paid at a weekly rate equal to 90 percent of the woman's average weekly earnings, with no upper limit, followed by 33 weeks at the lower of either the standard rate or 90 percent of the woman's average weekly earnings. MA is paid at either the standard rate or 90 percent of the woman's average weekly earnings, whichever is the lower, for the whole 39 week-period. The standard rate for both SMP and MA is £172.48 per week (2023/24).

A Sure Start Maternity Grant of £500 may be payable for a stillbirth if at the time of the claim the claimant is in receipt of an income related benefit such as Universal Credit. A Sure Start Maternity Grant is usually only paid for the first child.

Depending on individual circumstances, additional financial support may be available for parents through the benefit system, for example Universal Credit.