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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate his Department has made of the number of women who take between 39 and 52 weeks maternity leave in each year for which information is available.

The most recent official data on maternity leave is from the Maternity and Paternity Rights Survey in 2009, which collected data from mothers of children born in 2008. A previous survey in 2007 collected data for children born in 2006. There were policy changes between these dates: in particular, up to 39 weeks’ Statutory Maternity Pay were available in 2008 compared to 26 weeks in 2006. Findings from these two surveys are summarised in the table below, showing the percentage of mothers who took 39 weeks of maternity leave or more, out of a sample of mothers who had worked at some point in the 12 months before birth. Although the question asked about maternity leave, some responses appear to have included other forms of leave.

The Government will shortly commission a new survey, which will provide updated information. Subject to the progress of data collection, we anticipate publishing findings in Spring 2019.