Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many women are in receipt of maternity allowance; and what estimate she has made of the proportion of those women who are (a) an employee, (b) a worker and (c) self-employed.

The available information on the number of claimants receiving Maternity Allowance is published and can be found in table MA5 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/maternity-allowance-quarterly-statistics

Table MA7 of this publication shows the number of women receiving maternity allowance by employment status. It should be noted that the figures shown in this table refer only to women whose spell of maternity allowance commenced in the period, for the latest publication this is June to August 2019, and do not represent the total number of claimants shown in table MA5.