Parental Leave
(asked on 17th April 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what the average length of (a) Statutory Paternity Leave, (b) Shared Parental Leave and (c) Statutory Maternity Leave claimed by each claimant has been in each of the past five years.
Answered by
Justin Madders
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Information provided by employers to HMRC shows that the total value of payments made to individuals in receipt of Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay between 2019/20 and 2023/24 (the latest year for which full year data is available).
The table below presents a breakdown of the value of payments made to individuals by the region (based on recipient residence).
Table 1. Total value of Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP), Statutory Shared Parental Pay (SShPP) and Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) payments by claimant resident region, 2019/20 to 2023/24
Statutory Parental Payment | Government Office Region | 2019/20 (£ millions) | 2020/21 (£ millions) | 2021/22 (£ millions) | 2022/23 (£ millions) | 2023/24 (£ millions) |
Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) | East Midlands | £4.3 | £3.7 | £4.3 | £4.1 | £4.8 |
East of England | £5.2 | £4.5 | £5.3 | £5.3 | £6.1 | |
London | £8.1 | £7.4 | £8.5 | £8.0 | £9.6 | |
North East | £2.0 | £1.7 | £2.0 | £2.1 | £2.4 | |
North West | £6.5 | £5.5 | £6.4 | £6.4 | £7.3 | |
Northern Ireland | £2.0 | £1.6 | £1.9 | £1.9 | £2.2 | |
Scotland | £4.4 | £3.7 | £4.5 | £4.2 | £5.0 | |
South East | £7.3 | £6.5 | £7.7 | £7.5 | £8.7 | |
South West | £4.7 | £4.0 | £4.8 | £4.7 | £5.3 | |
Wales | £2.6 | £2.2 | £2.5 | £2.5 | £2.9 | |
West Midlands | £5.3 | £4.4 | £5.1 | £5.1 | £5.9 | |
Yorkshire and The Humber | £4.9 | £4.1 | £4.8 | £4.7 | £5.4 | |
Other / Unknown | £0.6 | £0.8 | £1.6 | £2.2 | £3.5 | |
Total | £57.9 | £50.2 | £59.3 | £58.9 | £69.0 | |
Statutory Shared Parental Pay (SShPP) | East Midlands | £1.1 | £1.2 | £1.4 | £1.4 | £2.0 |
East of England | £2.3 | £1.7 | £2.0 | £2.2 | £3.0 | |
London | £6.9 | £4.9 | £5.4 | £5.4 | £6.2 | |
North East | £0.5 | £0.5 | £0.6 | £0.6 | £1.1 | |
North West | £1.7 | £1.5 | £1.9 | £2.1 | £3.1 | |
Northern Ireland | £0.3 | £0.3 | £0.3 | £0.3 | £0.7 | |
Scotland | £1.2 | £1.1 | £1.3 | £1.3 | £1.5 | |
South East | £3.3 | £2.9 | £3.7 | £4.0 | £5.6 | |
South West | £1.8 | £2.1 | £2.4 | £3.0 | £3.8 | |
Wales | £0.7 | £0.6 | £0.8 | £0.9 | £1.2 | |
West Midlands | £1.2 | £1.1 | £1.4 | £1.6 | £2.0 | |
Yorkshire and The Humber | £1.4 | £1.4 | £1.4 | £1.8 | £2.5 | |
Other / Unknown | £0.3 | £0.4 | £0.6 | £1.0 | £1.8 | |
Total | £22.6 | £19.5 | £23.2 | £25.6 | £34.4 | |
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) | East Midlands | £185.9 | £181.2 | £189.5 | £188.8 | £203.0 |
East of England | £275.5 | £269.8 | £285.9 | £286.6 | £307.8 | |
London | £530.1 | £523.5 | £554.2 | £544.8 | £590.6 | |
North East | £92.9 | £89.7 | £93.3 | £93.1 | £102.1 | |
North West | £295.3 | £286.6 | £303.4 | £304.4 | £326.2 | |
Northern Ireland | £91.5 | £90.8 | £94.2 | £91.7 | £98.9 | |
Scotland | £207.8 | £200.8 | £213.1 | £209.5 | £225.0 | |
South East | £406.2 | £398.4 | £421.9 | £420.8 | £454.3 | |
South West | £216.3 | £212.2 | £223.4 | £217.3 | £233.7 | |
Wales | £114.1 | £110.2 | £115.2 | £116.4 | £127.1 | |
West Midlands | £224.4 | £221.0 | £230.3 | £230.6 | £249.1 | |
Yorkshire and The Humber | £207.9 | £202.7 | £212.7 | £211.7 | £226.4 | |
Other / Unknown | £36.5 | £56.2 | £91.6 | £136.4 | £194.1 | |
Total | £2,884.4 | £2,843.1 | £3,028.7 | £3,052.0 | £3,338.3 |
Source: HM Revenue and Customers (HMRC) HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) system 2019/20 to 2023/24
Notes:
1. All figures are based on HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) system and were extracted in Jan 2025. RTI is subject to revision and there may be small fluctuations in figures reported - these figures should not be considered “final”.
2. Figures for the total value of parental payments (£m) are rounded to the nearest hundred thousand.
3. Government Office Regions (GOR) are determined by matching the most recent postcode from the previous tax year with the Office for National Statistics’ postcode lookup table. If a partial postcode is provided an assumption is made based on the postcode district or area. The GOR with the most postcodes of a given district is returned. If no postcode is listed then region is marked as unknown. Other includes Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) does not routinely collect data on the length of Paternity Leave, Shared Parental Leave and Maternity Leave taken by parents. However, the Government commissioned the Parental Rights Survey which provides the best source of data on the length of parental leave taken, the findings are published here - https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/parental-rights-survey-2019 .
In addition, DBT also published HMRC data tables to accompany the Shared Parental Leave evaluation report here which include information on the number of individuals in receipt of SPP, SShPP and SMP by the number of months the payments spanned, this is available here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/shared-parental-leave-spl-evaluation. HMRC or DBT does not hold information which calculates the duration of parental payments by individual claimants.