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 Answer of 9 February 2021 to Question 146798 on Paternity Leave, what estimate his Department has made of the number of eligible fathers who took unpaid statutory shared parental leave in 2019-20.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy does not routinely collect data on the take-up of parental leave entitlements, including unpaid Shared Parental Leave. However, we are currently completing an extensive evaluation of the Shared Parental Leave and Pay schemes. This has included commissioning and interrogating information collected through large scale, representative, surveys of employers and parents. We also commissioned a qualitative study of parents who have used the schemes. The various data sources will give us a fuller picture of the level of take-up of paid and unpaid entitlements to Shared Parental Leave, tell us how the schemes are being used in practice, and help us to better understand the barriers and enablers to parents taking Shared Parental Leave. We will publish our findings later this year.