Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the average length of maternity leave broken down by income decile.

We have not made a direct estimate of the average length of Maternity Leave broken down by income decile. The 2019 Parental Rights Survey asked mothers the total number of weeks of paid or unpaid maternity leave that they took (or planned to take) broken down by household income bands. This data is available in Table 30 of the mothers data tables here - https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/parental-rights-survey-2019.

In addition, the most recent HMRC statutory payments data was released as part of the Parental Leave review. This information is published here - https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/parental-leave-and-pay-review-call-for-evidence - and includes a breakdown of individuals receiving Statutory Maternity Pay by income decile (Table 15) and separately by the number of months the payment spanned (Table 21).