Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the survey conducted by the group Pregnant Then Screwed in June 2022 which found that shared parental leave was only used by between two and eight per cent of eligible couples, what steps they are taking to encourage more parents to use shared parental leave.

The number of parents taking Shared Parental Pay has increased in line with predications made when the policy was introduced and has doubled between 2015-16 and 2021-22.

• 2015-2016: 6,200
• 2021-2022: 13,000

In June 2021, the Government introduced the Shared Parental Leave tool on gov.uk which supports parents to plan their leave. The tool has received positive feedback from users on both its ability to support the planning of Shared Parental Leave and facilitate conversations between parents and employers.