Maternity pay has gone too far

Except she didn’t actually say maternity pay has gone too far.

Well, she just wants little America in the UK, really, doesn’t she? If it’s good enough for America for there to be no obligation to pay anyone maternity leave, then it’s good enough for the UK. I mean, it’s not like the US is more a basket case than a paragon of virtue these days, or anything, is it? And if the birth rate is too low, we could ban abortions while we’re at it. Her world vision stinks - hard faced, uncaring, divisive and divided.

Blood and boil.
It's Brexit not working mothers destroying our economy. You fuckwit.
How dare you have any opinion on the economy after 14 years of wanton destruction.

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.

It’s a good point actually. I am mid 30s and seeing this a lot in my peer group (uni educated).

Only about 15% have children. Another 25% trying but having difficulties. The others all starting to panic to various degrees. Either because they haven’t got partners yet or they don’t have career stability/ savings/ houses sorted.

It is a problem IMO. Not only because women have the ticking clock, but because a lot of the men have very unhealthy sperm. In the group who have been trying and are getting investigations it’s becoming increasingly common it’s the men who are the issue. That’s a reasonably quick fix most of the time (around 3 months I am being told). But if women are losing a couple of years to trying before even looking at this then they are they are losing 2-3 by the time the men sort their sperm.

Then there’s the issue of going for number 2. My boys 2 and a half. Less than 25% again are pregnant or have had number 2. Most holding off for the 3 year mark where free childcare is available. Again stretching out the time to being able to have 2 children and lengthening the time that women are reproducing. Causing knock ons for fertility, higher risk pregnancies and longer out of the workforce or working at lowered capacity (due to illness, tiredness, energy levels of small children from perhaps 5 years to 10 years).

Make sure next time you vote for the Tories because they want the best for the working people.

In a majority of Eastern European countries, maternity pay is for two years. In the first year, I believe the pay is 90% of your salary, and in the second year, it is 75%. And taking into consideration that these countries are much less well off than the UK. Lovely tories.

Maternity pay has gone too far, says Badenoch.

Badenoch was not depending on maternity pay to put food on the table. She clearly despises less well-off women who are dependent on maternity pay to survive after having a baby.

I never did manage to express successfully. Only the odd floz here and there.

She's an awful woman with awful opinions. No surprises here!

Child benefit isn't limited to 2 children?

Badenoch said statutory maternity pay, set up to support mothers for 39 weeks after having a baby, is a "function of tax" which she called "excessive".

I would agree - it's a purely economic decision endorsed by whatever government is in power, without any reference to the emotional importance of 'family' - mothers (and fathers) wanting to bring up their children and how important bonding is in the early years.

She added that "the exact amount of maternity pay in my view is neither here nor there", adding: “We need to have more personal responsibility - there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies."

Again I can agree to a certain extent. But, this was possibly when women were expected to be the default 'stay-at-home' parent?

If this was to be treated as and paid as a 'proper job'. with employment and pension rights would it solve the problem?

Or would people have more children because it was an 'easy' opton paid for by state funding?

(having said that - and I'm going to be absolutely flamed for saying this! #donsveryhardhatandhides! - so many public sector jobs are paid for by state funding anyway and they have privileges / pensions/ salaries which are far better than private sector jobs .......

But, how do we balance the needs of people when they want to start a family - which the country needs for continuing economic viability - vs the needs of business to have a workforce which is present and actively working,

She later said she had been "misrepresented", and she was making a wider comment about cutting regulatory burdens on business.

How do we fairly balance the needs of children and the needs of family vs the needs of a viable standard of living for individuals and families vs the economic vialbility of the country vs the needs of businesses who need to operate without bringing in expensive deputy / agency staff?

In the end, what it boils down to is: the country needs more taxation revenue -

which means we need people in work.

I'm not sure what the answer is ............... ?

I know the world today is a far more materialistic sociey than in previous times.

And I'm not sure what that says about our current values and what we consider to be important

Not to downplay this everyone but if she's saying this now then what else has she got planned if she were to ever hypothetically lead the tories back into government?

Imagine what else she's got in her backpocket that she's not telling us...

It's completely bizarre statement and sadly shows the view of some businesses and her.
To get SMP you have to have worked to qualify so it's very bizarre to say tax payers are paying for it....

I'm not sure which Tory MPs she is aiming at frankly I don't care but stupid statements like this put maternity and paternity issues against further barriers they don't need and harps back to the 1950s!

For the record, I’m currently childless but I fully support at least full year of maternity pay (above SMP because it’s pathetically low) and further childcare support for all. I do not think having a child should mean placing yourself in a financially precarious position when you’ve been paying tax and NI for two decades in some cases (or not at all - it should not be means or contribution based, children are needed). KBs backtrack actually makes it worse. I’m sure she’d let new mothers starve given her statement on “cultures”.

There are both left and right leaning countries offering better maternity pay and rights than the U.K. Sweden being an example of a left leaning country. I knew someone would come back on my post and equate Hungary being bad because of its leader. Rather than consider that maybe they value women and families more than any U.K. politicians do. Why can’t we just look at the offering other countries have and demand better rather than tie ourselves in knots about the politics of that country?

to me it’s a bit like the pub decline

tbe accounts screwed over the licences fir more ad more rent and profit, they left and could get anyone to take the pubs on. So they close and become flats or houses. The brewery’s are selling less and less beer as the pubs keep closing- eventually the penny will drop that through there own greed they’ve killed their business

same with woman, they don’t want to spend on maternity service, maternity pay and will wonder why the birth rate will continue to drop. Greedy shortsighted plonkers

@TiredCatLady bravo. They can delete this one too if they please.

The lack of childcare was a major factor.

I’ll not mince my words here. There are few “politicians” (I use that term loosely in reference to this individual) who get my back up quite so much. Kemi is an incredibly mouthy piece of shit who no doubt were these ideas applied to her, would have no end of complaints. She’s vile, her ideas are vile and frankly we’d all be much better off if she’d simply fuck off back to the hole she crawled out of. I’ll wait for this post to be reported and deleted.

Tories have servants.

But let’s not hark back to the bad old days and race to the bottom. Surely it’s good that there’s been an improvement?

Also, it seems that lots has changed since 16 weeks was the maximum allowed maternity leave. For example, it’s not just low earners that can’t afford childcare. I’m a doctor and nursery fees for one child in one London equalled my entire take home salary. The cost of living has spiralled in comparison to incomes

Current policies are definitely not taking it too far in encouraging women to have children.

When you mix the anti immigration stuff with the lack of support for having babies, you end up with the inevitable question of who do those tories think will be wiping their arses in care homes?

It's genuinely hard to confidently identify satire on here these days.

But why should we have to? Clearly your child needed you, but regardless, general well being and emotional development are positively affected with parental care. We need to be supported in all respects if we choose to be sahm/p.

And will be a taxpayer again after the year is up. Unlike the 70's when women had no maternity leave but were having more babies, because families didn't need two salaries to pay the mortgage and women had fewer career opportunities than men. Not to mention the future taxpayers their children will be.

Not everyone has a partner or a job they can go back to. My partner left and I lost my job when pregnant (they still had to pay SMP). I started looking for a new job after 4 months but didn't get a new one for a further 6 months due to difficulties trying to do interviews with a baby on my own and a competitive market. I had saved but it wouldn't have been enough to get through it without SMP and could have lost my home.

I'd paid 20 years of national insurance by the time I was paid SMP. I thought that's what NI was for?? You can't claim it without having contributed.

I don't think it's very much at all but my opinion is that it should be paid in a lump sum no matter when you go back, therefore people can choose to go back sooner without loosing out, therefore benefiting the treasury.