Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much was spent on maternity pay in Scotland in each of the last five years.

Outturn for Maternity Pay consists of both Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance, and is published by country in the Expenditure by country and region tables, last updated following Autumn Statement 2023.

Outturn for Scotland in the last five years available is as below

(Expenditure £ million, nominal terms)

Maternity Allowance expenditure figures for Scotland are estimates using national and regional breakdowns from Official Statistics on Maternity Allowance benefit caseload and average amounts of benefit paid, applied to GB outturn expenditure totals.

Statutory Maternity Pay Expenditure figures for Scotland are estimates using national and regional breakdown of amounts of SMP paid to employees, applied to GB outturn expenditure totals.

Please note, these figures may change with the next publication of data, following Autumn Budget 2024.

We are not expecting to publish breakdowns of MA in Autumn 2024 as a new operational system to record MA cases is currently being developed. As such, Maternity Allowance statistics will be suspended from the quarterly statistics release on 13 August 2024 until data can be extracted from the new system. (Maternity Allowance: quarterly statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)).