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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what information his Department holds on the average amount of parental leave taken by (a) women and (b) men in (i) England, (ii) London and (iii) the London Borough of Lewisham in each of the last five years.

The most recent official data on average length of family-related leave taken by parents is from the Maternity and Paternity Rights Survey in 2009, which collected data from parents of children born in 2008 across Great Britain.

This shows that in 2008,

• mothers took an average of 39 weeks of maternity leave, up from 32 weeks in 2006.
• amongst fathers who took some paternity leave, 16% took more than two weeks, 50% took two weeks and 34% took less than two weeks of leave.

This does not contain information on average weeks of unpaid Parental Leave, nor of Shared Parental Leave which was introduced in 2015.

Information on the amount of leave taken at the regional or local level is not available.

The full Maternity and Paternity Rights Survey 2009/10 Research Report can be found here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/214367/rrep777.pdf

We are currently evaluating the Shared Parental Leave and Pay schemes. As a part of this, we are commissioning a new survey which will provide updated information. Subject to the progress of data collection, we anticipate publishing findings in Summer 2019.