Maternity pay has gone too far

[EasterIssland]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c781m9v4255o

apologies if there is another thread about it.
havent seen one.

im lucky enough to have a good salary that would allow me saving beforehand . Statutory maternity pay would mean around 20-30% of my salary. Is this too far? It’s one of the many reasons why we decided to only have one. I felt really vulnerable when I was on maternity leave and didn’t feel I kept having spare cash every month. I do understand what she means tho , the sooner we’re back the less we get from the government and more taxes we pay. Coming from a woman hurts even more not being recognised the sacrifices we do whilst we are on maternity leave

She's an idiot. Women on mat leave have generally paid a lot of NI or will return to pay more and the babies of today will finance Kemi's state pension The only way I could support her is if her argument is that private companies should be doing more to support their workers and there shouldn't be a governmental expectation of mat pay when private companies T&Cs are so bad and their shareholders get their pay off

I had to claim Maternity Allowance, which was a heady £42.10 a week, from 29 weeks because I'd been admitted to hospital with bleeding and my employer didn't have to pay Maternity pay if they made me start my leave straight away due to the length of time I'd been there.

I couldn't afford registered childcare on that plus child benefit, so I was so desperate for money when the inevitable 'oh, we have to make you redundant because your duties have been absorbed by the team' letter arrived, DD was put with assorted cash in hand mums (and removed pretty sharpish when they turned out to have unpleasant boyfriends or in one case, a violent ex), meaning I also lost a few jobs in the process.

Had I qualified for Maternity Pay, I'd have at least been able to sort out decent, safe childcare in time to get a reasonable new job, rather than ones that paid terribly and treated staff worse. And having enough food to keep lactating would have been really useful, especially as I was spending 12 hours a day away from a three month old baby for about £30/week after bills but before food/travel to work/compulsory office clothing.

Guess that's the sort of thing Badenoch wants us to go back to - babies being dumped on any random instead of safe, registered and inspected childcare, just so we don't get lazy and get too attached to our infants when there's minimum wage work to be done.

I wonder who looked after her kids? Nanny? Grandparents? Their father on Paternity Leave? Nursery? It's not as though she wouldn't have been able to pay the bills, whatever she chose.

A massive challenge to the existence of the welfare state is, IMO, the increasingly high taxes and poor returns it delivers for some workers.

I think most people are quite happy to pay into a system which they feel really benefits them.

But in the UK today (and particularly for parents, and especially those with younger children)… there’s quite a gap in terms of provision vs other European countries.

The birth rate gets worse every year, and yet maternity leave and childcare are seen as a massive inconvenience to the state rather than an investment in the future.

What about the welfare of the child? Many are only just being weaned at that age.

How can you accept her explanation for this? It doesn’t make any sense.

What happened, clearly, is that she said something so stupid and hateful without thinking it through that even HER stupid and hateful supporters were liable to be alienated by it. When advised of this by her team after the interview, she came up with some muddled explanation in order to row back.

It boggles the mind that anyone could take her nonsense statement about this at face value. The context was completely clear. She was not misunderstood.

If her team told her it would play well with party members, she absolutely would have stuck to her guns. She’s not just thick but craven too.

She knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s the Truss playbook. I think most PP have forgotten she only needs to appeal to the membership - about 100k Telegraph and Daily Express readers. She doesn’t need to appeal to the wider electorate for many years.

(((NeverDropYourMooncup))) I'm so sorry. I hope things are better for you now. Pregnant women and mothers of young babies and children are vulnerable in so many different ways.

Overpopulated with pensioners.

Many primary schools are at threat of closing or have closed due to undersubscription. Only Outstanding ones are generally over subscribed.

We're not going to have more doctors if there are no more children either 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's extraordinary that feminists on MN support Badenoch. She really has no interest in supporting women.

Agreed.

She’s trying to appeal to the people who thought Liz Truss was a good bet.

IIRC, the Tory party membership is mainly men in their 70s.

I think we need to ask ourselves why the people in this country need so much government support for things like maternity leave, childcare, even winter fuel allowance. Why don’t people in work, earn good enough wages or pensions to be able to pay for themselves? It’s all very well to tell people they need to be accountable for their decisions and I’m a big believer in that actually, but wages have been suppressed, taxes raised, interest rates raised and we’re all getting poorer, so the government and the banks are actually making this harder.

Oh come on. Kemi is a beacon of hope for the future. A real advocate for women. Good on the people of NW Essex for voting her in.

Not enough babies to be the taxpayers of the future.

Doesn't it depend on whose paying?

If it's Google or HSBC or any other big company, then they are in a position to support women on maternity leave easily.

If you or I start a tiny business and employ one person, a high level of maternity pay could bankrupt the business in its embryonic stage - not being able to afford to pay it and not have a working employee. In turn that can lead to unlawful recruitment practices - ie. men or older women.

@pickingupapen companies are only obliged to fund statutory hours, and are repaid to the tune of 103% of the sum paid.

Small businesses aren’t losing out.

She’s this century’s Emmeline Pankhurst

@Bananafoster Low wages is the elephant in the room I agree. If I was earning at the same rate now as I was in 2000 I'd be earning £37,000 today. However I am not. No one is doing the job I do. Try it for yourself, if you were earning a full time wage in 2000. See how much you've lost. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Tories have servants.

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.