Parental Leave

(asked on 28th April 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Government's announcement on 24 April 2020 that employees whose period of family-related leave begins on or after 25 April 2020 will be entitled to full pay, what assessment he has made of the level of financial support required by employees whose period of family-related leave began before that date.


Answered by
Paul Scully Portrait
Paul Scully
This question was answered on 5th May 2020

The Government laid regulations last week to ensure that where a worker has been furloughed under the CJRS and is receiving lower earnings as a result, this does not affect his or her eligibility for statutory family-related pay.

For Statutory Maternity Pay and Statutory Adoption Pay, eligible parents receive 90% of normal earnings for the first 6 weeks, followed by up to 33 weeks at the statutory flat rate (£151.20 per week). The new regulations also ensure that the amount of statutory maternity or adoption pay that new mothers and adopters receive over the first 6 weeks is calculated based on their normal earnings, not their furloughed pay.

Individuals who have been furloughed and whose period of family-related pay or Maternity Allowance begins on or after 25th April 2020 will be in scope of the change. Individuals whose period of family-related pay began before 25th April 2020 may see their entitlement affected. However, we anticipate that this will be a small number of people due to the fact that, for most people starting family-related pay before 25 April, the earnings assessment period will have taken place before the furlough scheme was initiated.

In a situation where employers decide to ‘top-up’ statutory pay for their employees on a contractual basis, they are able to claim this money through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

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