Tulip Siddiq – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tulip Siddiq on 2016-03-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will estimate the proportion of (a) mothers and (b) fathers in the labour force who were not able to claim statutory parental leave because of the requirement for 26 weeks of continuous employment with the same employer in the last 12 months.

Nick Boles

The Shared Parental Leave and Pay system is designed to strike the right balance between giving employees flexibility and giving their employers the certainty that they need to plan.

We do not routinely collect information that would enable us to estimate the proportion of (a) mothers and (b) fathers in the labour force who were not able to claim Shared Parental Leave and Pay because of the ‘continuity of employment requirement’.