Parental Leave
(asked on 29th October 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what data his Department holds on (a) the number of claimants and (b) the total value of payments of (i) Statutory Maternity Leave, (ii) Statutory Paternity Leave, and (iii) Shared Parental Leave by occupation for each of the last three years.
Information provided by employers to HMRC shows that the total value of payments made to individuals in receipt of Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) and Statutory Shared Parental Pay (SShPP) for 2024/25, 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 Maternity Pay (SMP), Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) and Statutory Shared Parental Pay (SShPP) payments by claimant resident region, 2024/25
Government Office Region | Total value of SMP payments | Total value of SPP payments | Total value of SShPP payments |
East Midlands | £213,500,000 | £5,200,000 | £2,900,000 |
East of England | £328,100,000 | £6,800,000 | £3,900,000 |
London | £631,800,000 | £11,100,000 | £8,000,000 |
North East | £109,100,000 | £2,600,000 | £1,800,000 |
North West | £350,100,000 | £8,000,000 | £4,900,000 |
Northern Ireland | £104,500,000 | £2,200,000 | £1,300,000 |
Scotland | £234,300,000 | £5,500,000 | £1,800,000 |
South East | £481,200,000 | £9,900,000 | £7,600,000 |
South West | £245,900,000 | £5,600,000 | £5,200,000 |
Wales | £132,100,000 | £3,100,000 | £2,000,000 |
West Midlands | £267,700,000 | £6,600,000 | £3,000,000 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | £242,900,000 | £5,900,000 | £3,800,000 |
Unknown | £249,600,000 | £4,700,000 | £3,300,000 |
Total | £3,590,800,000 | £77,200,000 | £49,500,000 |
Source: HM Revenue and Customers (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI) system 2024/25
Notes:
1. All figures are based on HMRC RTI system and were extracted in Aug 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.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) does not hold data on the number of individuals in receipt or the value of payments of SMP, SPP and SShPP by occupation. However, the Government commissioned the Parental Rights Survey which provides the best source of data on the occupation of parents who have taken parental leave, the findings are published here - https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/parental-rights-survey-2019 .