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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many people have (a) taken shared parental leave and (b) made a claim for shared parental pay since April 2015; and what proportion of such claimants were fathers and partners.

The Government does not yet have any information on the take up of Statutory Shared Parental Pay. Information for the 2015-16 tax year will be available from May 2016, although it will also include Additional Statutory Paternity Pay information up to December 2015. This will give the total number of claims for Statutory Shared Parental Pay but will not routinely include information on the proportion of claimants who were fathers and partners.

The Government does not collect information on the number of employees who have taken Shared Parental Leave. We will evaluate the policy by 2018 and this will enable us to better estimate the actual take up for leave.