Maternity pay has gone too far

I'm not sure where you got this, but at least one of those is wrong. In Ireland you are entitled to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave, and 16 weeks unpaid. Not less than 10 as is illustrated.

But businesses can claim back statutory maternity pay from HMRC so that argument makes no sense either.

Infuriating she framed it as tax payers bailing out non tax payers - by definition to be paid maternity pay you are a tax payer yourself! Divisive nonsense.

Fairly sure Badenoch and everyone she knows has never been in a position when she's needed statutory maternity pay. So from her fucked up perspective this would be perfectly acceptable : rich people can continue to have babies without worries and poor people's babies can starve.

Thankfully her party isn't in power any more.

As she has since made clear she was talking about the burden of excessive regulation and red tape on businesses and employers. She very obviously does not think statutory maternity pay is excessive .

Yep.

All out governments seem happier to import future tax payers.

Maternity leave isn't the gift she thinks it is.

If I'd been told I had to be back at work when my daughter was 6 months old, or let my job go, I'd have let my job go and there's a good chance we'd have adjusted to life on one salary, + any Universal Credit I'd be entitled to.

That's ~£6kpa in tax, a little over £2kpa in NI contributions and almost £3k in student loan repayments every year as a minimum, even if my husband earned enough to prevent me claiming benefits.

Giving me the right to take 1 year of maternity leave, some of it paid, means more money in the treasury for the next 33 years.

It’s a typical dog whistling remark by a politician presumably making the case for reducing taxes or paid leave by businesses.

I suspect they want a smaller tax base and to pay for that vision, the infrastructure spending will need to be cut. The asset rich wealthy will have private hospitals, schools, gated communities etc while the rest of the country transitions toward a model where the middle class disappears and the majority are working poor on low wages and fewer leave entitlements. So basically where the US is and the opposite of the EU. They will chant “Stop the Boats” to distract people from where the problems really lie and encourage them to blame immigrants for their economic woes.

Should be 12 months full pay standard IMO for working parents.

No way I could have gone back as an EBF mum, DD breastfed frequently until she was 1 years old due to a number of food allergies.

My baby wouldn’t eat any solids until 10 months, and wouldn’t take anything other than breast milk direct from my breasts. How would I have gone back to work at 6 months?

The thing is that regardless of our own views, the government can't mandate that women save to cover maternity leave because that simply isn't always possible - unplanned pregnancies, low paying jobs, financial abuse, poor mental health. And then when the baby arrives, they suffer because their mother wasn't able to save thousands.

I think she “misspoke”, I don’t think she’d thought this through or planned to say it; it’s not even clear what she’s trying to say. She’s just inadvertently made a massive blunder. I think she’s out. My votes on Tuggenhat

Piss off Kemi

Oh, but she was mulling 🤣

Just the sort of stuff I would expect someone who thinks that doing a few shifts in MacDonalds makes them working class. good old "burger flipping Badenoch" trying to outdo even herself with her latest attempt at headline grabbing

I wouldn't take her seriously. She actively says things to push the boundaries and get a reaction. She always has. I have known her since I was about 16. I am now 41. She just has a bigger audience now.

Have you listened to the actual interview? This article misrepresents what she actually said and conflated her comments on general business regulation (which she thinks goes too far) and maternity pay (about which her comments were more about saving up and taking responsibility for having children). She didn't say maternity pay has gone too far.

There are plenty of her views with which I strongly disagree and plenty of points I could criticise but this was lazy clickbait journalism from the BBC.

She has always been an immature, misogynistic pick me.

SMP is too low considering how the work mothers are doing contributes to society.

In fairness, I think what she was saying has been deliberately misrepresented. If the headline was what she meant, she wouldn’t have corrected it.

Maternity pay is a modern phenomenon that is necessary because we live in a highly atomised, highly taxed, highly regulated world. Yet despite the creation of this benefit (which gives us the right toe return to work after a whole year off compared with 3 months in the US) our birth rates are declining. Add to that the data that a third of women are childless, but only 5% are voluntarily childless. It indicates that there is a lot wrong in our society.

I'm in YVR and am fortunate to be SAHM. Despite our mat leave being good, comparatively, it behooves us to push for better. ☺️

"Maternity pay has gone too far" and "... not all cultures are equally valid"

Remember, this is from a woman who less than 3 months ago was the Minister for Women and Equalities, and had held the post for 2 years. No wonder she achieved absolutely nothing of note during her time in office, during which she was also Secretary of State for Business and Trade - a post in which she likewise achieved fuck all.

I'm a woman who couldn't have children but I have friends who are mummys, who have had their maternity leave and come back and I've watched them struggle with the nursery/school pick up times and partners not pulling their weight but we've sorted work stuff so they can get away on time etc. It's not just one woman making return to work possible. It's a team of women smoothing things over to keep the engine running.
What bugs me is the people who do take the piss with mat leave. When things have got a bit shaky at work, I have seen several colleagues say, "Oh might get pregnant so I don't have to deal with this boss" etc and they've gone and done exactly that! Then there's the one who has had three successive babies back to back and she hasn't actually been in work for two and a half years but we've had to cover her workload. She's also bragged about not keeping her qualifications or professional registrations up to date so she won't even be employable when she does return!!!

We have poorer maternity benefits than many European countries and pay almost the lowest State Pension in Europe, one of the worst health systems and the most expensive care for the elderly systems. We also pay lower contributions into these systems and less tax than many European countries. We pay much more out in terms of numbers who could but don't work and sit at home unemployed claiming a range of benefits, and those who could work but choose to live on long term sickness . We make some benefits very easy to claim. For example- I have said this before and it never goes down well but it's true- there are thousands and thousands of parents weekly claiming benefits for 'looking after' their children who they have had diagnosed privately as having ADHD. Many of these children do not have it and would not get the diagnosis and medication through an Ed Psych and the NHS. I am not exaggerating when I say I see this every working day.
Why we are attacking women and the elderly I have no idea. We need to get people off unemployment and into work, stop designating them as unable to work and make living off benefits much tougher than it is. They should be contributing wherever they can, not taking.
Building a fairer society is about supporting the elderly, the disabled, those who are really sick, women who have had babies and making sure children have a good start in life. It is not about many of the people who choose to not work and expect the State to pay for that. There are far too many idle, dodgers, wimps and liars in our society.
We should reduce to zero for any household (not person) earning under £35,000 Council Tax should be paid per person living in a house with a staggered rate for children over 5 and should be based on household income. We need to bump up the living standards of the less well off people. It isn't hard to do.
I'm sure I'll be flamed for this but it's true.

Typical Tories talking about things as if they’re a lifestyle choice. If women didn’t have children there would be nobody left to work in companies, there would be nobody to look after old people, the country would cease to exist. Therefore it benefits society as a whole. Women can’t have children without mat leave. And it’s important for the baby to spend time with the mother instead of them having to rush back to work. We should be proud of our mat leave rules, not trying to diminish them.