Kemi Badenoch: Maternity pay is “excessive” and people should exercise “more personal responsibility”

[MidnightPatrol]

Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch interviewed today has said that, “Maternity pay is “excessive” and people should exercise “more personal responsibility”

When it was put to her that the amount of maternity pay was important for people who could not otherwise afford to have a baby, Ms Badenoch said: “We need to have more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”

An interesting position to take as part of her campaign for the Tory leadership position: less maternity pay and support for new parents.

Awful woman. Stat maternity pay was hard fought for in recognition that women remaining in the workplace was a good thing economically, and that having children was an important part of society and should be recognised as thus.

In the good old days house prices were lower, both parents didn't need to work, and women had comparatively few rights. I do a lot of work with colleagues in the US. They would give their right arm to have the same opportunities women in the UK have around maternity leave. In the end a large number of them end up leaving work or having to drop down to significantly lower pay/lower responsibility roles. Thereby reducing their contributions to the overall economy and limiting their longer term options. The US gets away with this because it is a massive economy with a very different value base. But it can leave women at a very significant disadvantage.

Badenoch is spouting regressive claptrap that should have no place in UK politics. But sadly because it is coming from a woman, may gain traction in a way it shouldn't.

"But statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive."

This is her quote about it. If she has an issue with taking tax from one group and giving it to another, god help those on benefits.

Ooh, that’s bad. Generally I find her sensible but maternity pay is crucial. It’s barely manageable with it, for many people.

@DancingPhantomsOnTheTerrace that does make you wonder… what does she regard the function of the tax system to be?

I assume she doesn’t have the same view of pensions, given that’s where most of her votes can be expected to come from.

@SensibleSigma it does seem a surprising position to take…

Also slightly odd justification that in the past people had more kids without it - there are a myriad number of reasons for that, from access to contraception to cost of housing!

"There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”

Er, yes. That was also the time when some employers required women to leave their jobs when they got married.

I’m childfree and retired so I have no idea what maternity pay is but if I had to give an opinion either way I’d say it falls on the side of ‘not enough’, the same as maternity care, labour care, afterbirth care, childcare, early years support, education and the welfare of children.

It was a time when a family could live on one wage, too.

I mean, there’s something to be said for that, so couples have a choice about the amount of time spent at work and at home- flexibility- but that’s not achieved by removing maternity pay.

Well, the next step is - there was a time when there were not any pensions and people were talking more personal responsibility.

Is she the one who was against winter fuel payments to pensioners as well?
The interesting pattern is imaging…God helps us all.

She was pro-means testing the WFA when she ran for leadership two years ago. Somewhat conveniently forgotten in her criticism of labour doing it. That is apparently an "attack on pensioners", whereas her policy would presumably have been sensible and measured.
Interesting to see whether she views removing/reducing maternity pay as an "attack on mothers".

But a lot of the tax being collected to pay for maternity leave will be coming from high earning women who've managed to stay in the work force after having children due to the fact they got maternity leave.

Shh! I don't think you're supposed to notice that...

Yes, years ago there wasn't any maternity pay. But that was when men earned three times what women were paid, and the womenfolk were housewives anyway.

Oh don't start being sensible.

This woman is a hard right fruitloop and yet plenty on MN blow smoke up her arse because she agrees with them on the trans issue 🙄

And I say that as a GC feminist.

I’m pro means testing winter fuel allowance myself, I agree that there should be mitigations and the threshold is too low. But it seems to me that Kemi Badenoch has a certain approach to things which her view about maternity pay shows clearly.
I remember talking among conservatives that people should take more personal responsibility for their health and eat healthily and exercise more and so on and so on.
It’s a very dangerous road imo. We might remember suddenly that there was a time when there were no MPs and king or queen was enough.

When I had kids smp was much less but things were very different then.
It’s not a race to the bottom.
I already think motherhood and maintaining a career is, for many, very difficult but if smp is drastically cut then it could become impossible.
Women bring a lot to the workplace and the economy and should be supported.

@pizzaHeart so am I. But I don't think that someone who thinks £184 a week of SMP is "excessive" would have honestly put the threshold any higher.

Well said.

There’s another thread on here about the comments she made on immigration and India. If she keeps this up we might need a whole ‘insane, right-wing shit Kemi Badenoch said today’ subsection on MN.

I don't think this is going to win her any friends

She's trying to out-Thatcher Thatcher and what she's saying will be popular to certain sections of the Tory party. Dangerous.

@Walkinginthesand yes… I suppose it’s worth remembering that she is trying to appeal to Conservative Party members, those who voted Liz Truss in.

She's a Tory. Why are you surprised?

It somewhat irks me that Mps of all colours, who have meals and expenses off the back of the tax payers start telling those in the general population that they receive too much of their tax back in help towards various things, the government are there to spend tax payers money on the betterment of society some of them come across as if it comes out of their own bank accounts, but of course when it comes to Mp pay, it's an iNdEpEnDaNt bOdY that decides on that, fucking melts the lot of them