Parental Pay
(asked on 6th March 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people started receiving (a) statutory maternity pay, (b) statutory maternity allowance, (c) statutory paternity pay and (d) shared parental pay in each quarter since April 2015.
The Department for Work and Pensions have policy responsibility for Statutory Maternity Pay and Statutory Maternity Allowance. BEIS have policy responsibility for Statutory Paternity Pay and Shared Parental Pay.
In answer to (a), we do not hold information on the number of people who started receiving Statutory Maternity Pay in each quarter. The latest annual estimate is that around 350,000 women commenced Statutory Maternity Payments in 2014/2015. Note this covers the number of in-flows (e.g. births) to estimate the amount of women who started receiving Statutory Maternity Payments in 2014/2015, not all recipients during that year.
In answer to (b), we are able to provide the following table which displays the number of people that commenced their claim of Maternity Allowance in the given quarters, rounded to the nearest 100:
Quarter ending | May-2015 | Aug-2015 | Nov-2015 | Feb-2016 | May-2016 | Aug-2016 |
MA inflows | 17,800 | 19,600 | 19,000 | 17,600 | 17,600 | 15,200 |
Source - Maternity Allowance: quarterly statistics
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/maternity-allowance-quarterly-statistics
Sample data is 5% and rounded to the nearest 100.
(1) Inflow figures do not include any late notifications to the computer system and will increase substantially when subsequent datasets become available.
(2) These figures exclude a small proportion of clerical cases.
In answer to (c) and (d), we do not hold information on the number of people who started receiving Statutory Paternity Pay and Statutory Shared Parental Pay in each quarter since April 2015.
Based on a small sample of data provided to HM Revenue & Customs by employers, we estimate that around 215,000 employees claimed Statutory Paternity Pay and around 6,000 employees claimed either Statutory Shared Parental Pay or Additional Paternity Pay in 2015/16. Note that this covers all recipients during 2015/16, including those who commenced their claim in 2014/15.