Enhanced maternity/Shared parental pay

[MeadowHay]

If your employer provides some enhanced maternity pay over the standard SMP, do they provide any enhanced pay for shared parental leave over standard shared parental pay?

My employer matches SPP to maternity pay. When I was off DP got better SPP enhancement that I did for mat pay, so towards the end of the first 6 months we both took some time off together, for which he got full pay and I got half pay. It just meant we didn't get quite a full year off in total, but it was financially much better.

DH is local authority and the maternity and shared parental do not match. They offer enhanced maternity (it was full pay 6 months then half pay 6 months, but I think they may have changed a bit), but SPP is the statutory minimum. Apparently they can get away with it as maternity pay and shared parental pay are two different things and as the man and woman are treated the same and paid the same for shared parental pay it is not discriminatory.

A woman will always go off on maternity leave to start with maternity pay (if you qualify). You then have to give notice to end maternity leave early and move over to shared parental leave and pay (again if you qualify). You get the same time - 52 weeks leave and 39 weeks pay - but can swap over when you want or take it at the same time, as long as you give 8 weeks notice.

If you get enhanced maternity pay and are going off first, you will find you are financially better to be on maternity first, so don't give the notice too early. For example, on SMP you get the first 6 weeks at 90% so unless you want to go back before then, stay on maternity to begin with and then swap as SPP has no enhancement to start and is just the flat rate.

@CornishMaid1 that's terrible, I don't know how any company can justify that. It's discrimination against both sexes in my opinion, it's not giving the men a fair chance to stay at home and it's not giving women a fair chance to go back to work. They are pretty much forcing the women to stay in the primary care role because of the better financial interest. By law women only have to take off 2 weeks to recover before returning to work.

My workplace also only allows mums to benefit from enhanced mat pay if you return to work after a specific period of time maximum, i.e. you are not able to take more than x months. If you do want to take more than x months then you are not entitled to the enhanced mat pay at all and only provided with SMP, regardless of length of service. Don't you think that's awful?!

@MeadowHay
Yes that's terrible.
So if you say at the start of mat leave yes I will come back in eg 6 months and so they pay you the enhanced - then you get to 6 months and your baby needs you to stay off work longer so you tell them you aren't returning until eg 12 months - what are they going to do? Demand the money back by sending the bailiffs round??
What a bunch of gits!

They would just deduct it each month from your wages when you return to work. You have to work for 12 months after returning too if you get enhanced pay or you have to pay that back too! It's awful tbh.