Rejected petition Change Maternity allowance to earned income treat the same as smp

I have just gone on maternity and unfortunately have not been in my current job long enough to receive smp missing out on it by 3 weeks, I have had to claim maternity allowance however this is classed as unearned income and deducted from my universal credit award leaving me in a deficit.

More details

This is unfair to new mums who are wanting to enjoy maternity leave essentially it’s leaving new mums on unpaid maternity leave because it’s given in one hand and taken in the other, if we received smp then it would be treated as income and would not be deducted pound for pound. Instead of enjoying the time with the baby new mums are sat stressing how they will pay bills and like myself actually debating not having maternity leave and returning to work 4 weeks after having a section!

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

You may wish to sign this petition which calls for the same action: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/619875

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 24 October 2022
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.