Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reasons self-employed and employed people are treated differently on the provision of statutory adoption leave.

The main reason why parental leave entitlements for adopters focus on supporting employed parents is that they do not generally have the same level of flexibility and autonomy over the time they take off work as self-employed adopters do.

The Government is not ruling out providing further support for self-employed parents in the future. But, as set out in the Government response to the Taylor Review of modern employment practices, while we agree with the principle of equalising benefits for the self-employed it is right to only consider making changes to this area once we have carefully considered this in the wider context of tax, benefits and rights over the longer term.