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.

I am quite surprised by that.
She’s trying to get rid of immigration so the already low birth rate needs improving.

I’m child-free and I think maternity pay is really, really important.

Also, doesn’t it cost more to replace someone than pay them mat pay?

Some of them haven't read a ragged trousered philanthropist and if they did thought it was a guide book on how to adjust workers pay

I don't believe in the Society,' observed Crass. 'I can't see as it's right that a inferior man should 'ave the same wages as me.

The fact of the matter is that as a black woman, Badenoch has to seriously ramp up the hard right rhetoric to stand any chance of getting elected as leader by the hard of thinking, Farage loving, thinly veiled racist, daily mail reading amoebas who make up a fairly large part of the Tory grassroots. That's why she comes up with the shit she does. She knows what she's doing.

There'll be tooth gnashing cretins somewhere absolutely outraged that their hard earned tax £££s fund the measly £184 a week that makes up maternity pay.

Bloody hell. Nasty self-interested woman. Probably trying to appeal to the older voters. "We never had maternity pay in my day. We cut our cloth..." Completely forgetting how dual income is essential nowadays and not a luxury.

I’m always surprised by those kinds of people.

I remember someone saying her older brother had his children quite young, he now refused to eat anywhere that has ‘kids eat free’ type deals because they weren’t available/widespread when he had young kids so why should he pay towards others getting it.

Another one was someone said they paid for university so they wouldn’t support teenagers being able to go to university for free on a thread about uni fees.

Buying less Netflix and Costa will surely cover the shortfall right?

Mums all have enormous tvs and iphones so they don’t need maternity pay anyway.

Daily Mail will have that article up by 4pm tomorrow.

And frankly, even when one income is enough, we see plenty of examples on MN where the parent earning that one income is only too delighted to weaponise their holding of the purse strings against the unwaged parent.

I think older people can be completely clueless about the cost of housing and childcare if starting out today.

They think a dual income household is because of a desire for luxuries - not because it’s unaffordable to raise a family (or just rent a big enough house) on one wage.

I wonder if her bereavement leave in 2022 was paid and if so, if that was excessive.

Sigh ! Please don't start with the ageism and who are this homogeneous lump of old people ? For what it's worth (saying this as a childfree women) I think families need more support, not less.

Mrs Badenoch is a mother of three. How much maternity leave and pay did she claim?

Lots of old people agree it was hard when they had children and don’t want it to be hard for young people as well and lots of young people thing people should ‘take personal responsibility’. I think it’s a minority of people across all ages and not just old people who will agree with the mp.

She wants to come out of the ECHR, is trying to stir up culture wars and is coming after mothers. She is a big fan of Thatcher and we all know how Thatcher felt about women and the poor.

When you criticise her, her GC fans come at you and call you racist.

Dreadful woman, and she's my MP. She lost her 27,000 vote majority in the July election and got in with just about 3,000.

She's very far right and I've always been astounded at how much support she has had on here up to now.

Hopefully this latest comment on maternity pay will ensure that people start to see her as the far right arsehole that she actually is

That is the very purpose of tax!
She is ab extremely dangerous person. Very right wing pretending to the the friend of women

Well, hopefully this will stop people trying to present her as some sort of champion for women's rights. I never understood why people thought that anyway - apart from the trans issue, there hasn't ever been any indication of her caring much about such issues.

I expect the posters who worship at her feet still won't hear a word against her.

@ilovesooty You could well be right there. More fool them.

She's more Thatcher than Margaret Thatcher ever was, and that's saying something.

The sooner the contest is over and she pushes off to Reform the better. I pretty much despise the Tories but even they are mostly better than this facile and deeply unpleasant woman. She doesn't deserve a moment of airtime.

Ha!

I dint think it's young people that come out with the phrase 'back in my day'

Most people have to save to cover the shortfall in income in anticipation of starting a family. The number of children per family is going down, owing in large part to the cost of living. SMP is the bare minimum it should be - actually, it's less than the bare minimum, because you pay tax on SMP.