Recommendation 16

HM Government · verbatim extract Deferred

Evaluating Shared Parental Leave and Pay is an important part of the policymaking process. As part of the evaluation, we commissioned large, representative surveys which asked about a range of parental leave and pay entitlements as well as about Shared Parental Leave specifically. The Shared Parental Leave Evaluation Report was published in June 2023 and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/shared- parental-leave-spl-evaluation Shared Parental Leave gives working families choice and flexibility about who cares for their child in the first year, and when. It challenges the assumption that the mother will always be the primary carer and enables working parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in the first year of their child’s life, if they wish. This enables mothers to return to work early and share their remaining maternity entitlement with fathers and partners, allowing them to be the child’s primary carer. Information provided by employers to HM Revenue and Customs shows that take-up of Shared Parental Leave has doubled since the first years of its introduction, and it is now broadly in line with the Government’s initial estimate. Shared Parental Leave requires a huge cultural change. Other countries that have implemented schemes designed to balance parental leave entitlements are still working to increase take-up. We are committed to looking at what the barriers are, and why people are not taking up such schemes. The Government has developed an online tool to help parents plan Shared Parental Leave and Pay which was launched on gov.uk in June 2021. This helps parents to understand their entitlements and facilitate discussions with employers, thereby encouraging more new parents to use the scheme. Feedback on the tool has been very positive.