Small Businesses: Parental Pay
(asked on 7th July 2025) - View Source
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many employers claimed parental leave pay through Small Employers Relief in each of the last five years.
Data for the financial year 2024/25 has not yet been fully analysed as the financial year has only recently ended. Data for financial years 2020/21 until 2023/24 is provided below.
The table below shows the number of PAYE schemes who claimed compensation for any of the four Statutory Parental Payments, qualifying them for Small Employers’ Relief.
Date | Statutory Maternity Pay Scheme Count | Statutory Paternity Pay Scheme Count | Shared Parental Pay Scheme Count | Statutory Adoption Pay Scheme Count | Total |
20/21 | 62,800 | 10,200 | 500 | 300 | 73,800 |
21/22 | 63,000 | 14,600 | 600 | 300 | 78,500 |
22/23 | 61,000 | 15,700 | 600 | 400 | 77,700 |
23/24 | 58,600 | 15,000 | 600 | 400 | 74,600 |
Notes:
1) Data collected using HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) and extracted in December 2024. RTI is subject to revision or updates.
2) PAYE scheme counts have been rounded to nearest 100.
3) The table shows the count of PAYE schemes who claimed Small Employers’ Relief, with schemes used as a proxy for business count.
The table below shows how much compensation was paid to PAYE schemes claiming Small Employers’ Relief but not the entire value of parental payment claims.
Date | Statutory | Statutory | Shared | Statutory | Total (£000’s) |
20/21 | 10,500 | 200 | 100 | 100 | 10,900 |
21/22 | 12,400 | 300 | 200 | 100 | 13,000 |
22/23 | 13,400 | 1,400 | 200 | 400 | 15,400 |
23/24 | 17,400 | 400 | 200 | 200 | 18,200 |
Notes:
1) Data collected using HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) and extracted in December 2024. RTI is subject to revision or updates.
2) Claims values have been rounded to nearest £100,000.
The table below shows the proportion of claims for Small Employers’ Relief compensation against total parental pay reclaims.
Date | Total Compensation Count | Total Recovery Count | Proportion |
19/20 | 77,000 | 202,000 | 38% |
20/21 | 74,000 | 185,000 | 40% |
21/22 | 79,000 | 196,000 | 40% |
22/23 | 78,000 | 196,000 | 40% |
23/24 | 75,000 | 196,000 | 38% |
1) Data collected using HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) and extracted in December 2024. RTI is subject to revision or updates.
2) Total number of claims rounded to nearest 1000.
3) The proportion calculation assumes all schemes claiming compensation are also counted within number of claims for recoveries.
Further breakdowns of information by income decile or of employees by region are not currently available from published statistics, and collating and verifying the relevant data solely for the purpose of answering this question would incur disproportionate cost.
Some related information may be found in this call for evidence: Parental leave and pay review: call for evidence - GOV.UK, including the number of claimants by income decile and region up to 2023/24.