Conservative leadership bids - Maternity pay comments

[LoobiJee]

The Guardian is quoting Kemi Badenoch using the word “excessive” when talking about tax as ‘taking from one group of people and giving to another’, when questioned about maternity pay.

I mean, the whole point of tax is that it’s about taking money from individual citizens and businesses and using it to pay for things that might not be possible without taking and pooling those funds. Such as, let’s say, pandemic preparations.

She fails to mention that one of the reasons businesses are failing is because of the additional costs of imports and exports post-Brexit.

She also fails to mention that there was a time when houses didn’t costs six times your salary, when rents were lower, when council houses were being built, and when the UK’s economic infrastructure was owned by the tax payer not by overseas multinational corporations.

Quote from the Guardian coverage below.

Badenoch says maternity pay benefits 'excessive'

Kemi Badenoch has said she thinks maternity pay is too high.

In an interview with Times Radio, she was asked if she thought maternity pay was at the right level. She replied:

Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for. 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.

Businesses are closing, businesses are not starting in the UK, because they say that the burden of regulation is too high.

When asked to confirm that she thinks maternity pay is excessive, she replied:

I think it’s gone too far the other way, in terms of general business regulation. We need to allow businesses, especially small businesses, to make more of those decisions.

The exact amount of maternity pay, in my view, is neither here nor there. We need to make sure that we are creating an enviroment where people can work and people can have more freedom to make their own decisions.

When it was put to her that level of maternity pay was important for people who could not otherwise afford to have a baby, 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.

Statutory maternity pay is 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, and then £184 per week, or 90% of average pay, for the next 33 weeks.

Badenoch says she practises what she preaches in this regard. According to Blue Ambition, Michael Ashcroft’s useful and mostly positive biography of Badenoch, when she was head of digital operations at the Spectator, before becoming an MP, and she became pregnant with her second child, she resigned instead of taking maternity leave. “She told me she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was on maternity leave,” Fraser Nelson, the Spectator editor, is quoted in the book as saying. “She would have been within her rights not to have done that.”

Badenoch might have been helped in making this decision by the fact that her husband is an investment banker.

It is not about focusing on definitions to the exclusion of all else. It is not either /or. But definition is the very foundation on which you make law. Law involves making fine legal discriminations and distinctions. Without legal clarity - we have a big mess and women have no protection from the encroachment of males into female spaces. Why would a government not actively seek clarity when making law?

It does come across as "either/or" when GC posters insist nothing can be done without a definition of "woman".

We are where we are now and like I said, I'd rather hear more about the policies to protect women than fighting about clothing gifts and Winter Fuel Allowance. In another article I just read about a rich Tory donor boasting that he spends his WFA on "an exceptional bottle of wine".

Fed up with culture war nonsense really.

It is common to use the word 'you' in conversation rather than the more formal 'one'.However - you have stated many times that you are 'trans inclusive'. People can judge for themselves from your own arguments what they perceive as your position.

No I haven't
This is exactly what I mean. Please don't make incorrect statements about me. Either ask or just don't say anything.

What women are doing is highlighting the fundamental importance of definitions and clarity when it comes to protecting the interests of women and girls.

Why would someone resist a definition that could be clearly understood by everyone in the service of protecting women and girls?

OK.
I'm not "resisting a definition". I'm saying there is plenty that can still be done in lieu of a definition.

I'm really not wanting a debate where my position is strawmanned and misrepresentation to prove whatever point you want to make. Badenoch abjectly failed to change the definition in the 15 months she had to do it, so now we are where we are with Labour.

The correct legal terminology is not 'safe spaces' but single sex spaces. You'd think a lawyer would get that right, wouldn't you? Implicit in this fudge is the idea that men with certicates with female markers ( which they are making far easier to obtain) will be permitted access to some spaces which are single sex - such as toilets and changing rooms.

Furthermore, the message from the Labour benches is not consistent at all. Some say that "each case of admittance to female spaces must be judged on its own merits", and alongside this a continuing refusal to clarify that sex refers to biological sex - means that any man with a certificate is now legally 'a woman'.

This implies that some men are now legally women. If you cannot adequately describe what a woman is and enshrine that in law - then some men get included in the definition. This is all pure Stonewall - who have been driving the Labour party for years when it comes to isues around women's sex based protections. The aim was originally to have 'Sex' removed altogether from the Equalities act to be replaced entirely with 'Gender'

Why do you always assume that conversations are about you?

You are not a law or policy maker are you? Why do you think a government or a political party would resist making definitions clear in law?

Why do you always assume that conversations are about you?
Mainly because I keep getting misrepresented so I'm taking care to keep everything very clear.

Why do you think a government or a political party would resist making definitions clear in law?
I have no idea why the Tories didn't do it; Labour have only been in power for 3 months, more than half of which has been parliamentary recess. So it's premature to say they are "resisting" at the moment. I suspect they have other priorities like the budget.

Anything to say about Badenoch's NMW comments?

Utter Rubbish - a GC feminist would support all of those things. I do.

Kemi Badenoch does not speak for ALL or even most feminists, just a handful of rightwing ones. I agree with her on some issues and diverge on many others.

However, I simply do not feel that feminism includes men, however they identify. I do feel that so-called feminists that include such men in the definition of women are not actually feminists because, central to supporting the issues outlines above, is the essential fact that women have uteruses, female endocrine systems and thus female specific issues that impact their lives which men with testicles and penis do not.

Can't quite believe this post.

Winter Fuel Allowance does protect women. Women will be disproportionately affected by it's removal because there are significantly more older women than older men. And those women most negatively affected will also be the most vulnerable of that cohort because for whatever reason they have not claimed the Pension Credit to which they are entitled. This will include those who have dementia, those who are not literate, those who have nobody to help them navigate the benefit system and those who are simply too proud to claim. Not to mention those whose income is £1 over the eligibility threshold. We've known for years that austerity disproportionately affects women and this is what this policy will do.

WFA is £200 IN A YEAR. Most people in receipt of it aren't going to notice. The very poorest pensioners are keeping it.
There is an argument to be made for moving the threshold up. But it's getting a disproportionate amount of airtime compared to, say, the Conservatives cuts to universal credit.

Meanwhile Badenoch (who the thread is about incidentally) thinks businesses can't afford NMW. If NMW gets cut, how much per year do you think that will cost women?

I feel you missed my point

Utter Rubbish - a GC feminist would support all of those things. I do. Yes. Im saying all feminists support those things, including ones who believe TWAW.

A number of people calling themselves GC are not feminist, and do not support those things. The last government, that Badenoch was member of, did nothing about those things. That's because they weren't feminists.

No; a variety of Labour MPs, including Starmer, have said on more than one occasion that they do not intend to make the definition of sex any clearer.

WFA is £200 IN A YEAR. Most people in receipt of it aren't going to notice. The very poorest pensioners are keeping it.

There are around 800,000 pensioners who are eligible for PC but have not claimed it who will have their WFA removed. These are the very poorest pensioners and very likely the most vulnerable of that group. They are also disproportionately women. For some of those 800,000 £200 will be the difference between keeping warm and freezing.

There are millions who are just above the threshold - such as my father - who will miss it; for whom it makes their life just that bit easier, especially with fuel bills about to go up yet again.

I think your point was missed because you are obfuscating it.

You appear to be lumping GC-feminists (feminists who do not include men in their feminism and feel the biological reality of womanhood is central to their experience, rights and political/social/legal needs) together with people whose motivations centre around preserving gendered roles for biological women because of internalised or cultural misogyny.

These may include conservative far right individuals whose concern for women’s rights are entirely linked into engendered and regressive social stereotypes that, ironically, many gender ideologues are also attuned to. The people you seem to be referring to as ‘GC feminists’ might encompass (for example) right wing, conservative Christians who do not support women’s reproductive rights or bodily autonomy and proliferate the so-called ‘women’s rights’ movement across the pond, but are evident at a much smaller degree over here. People that GC feminists are deeply and utterly opposed to.

People/women who do not support all of the rights you listed are NOT ‘GC feminists’, they are misogynistic dinosaurs piggy-backing a movement that is about women (not men), but have an entirely different agenda and motivations. But equally, people who do actually support those things cannot in reality fight for those things whilst at the same time insisting that men who identify as women are included within the definition of ‘woman’ for feminist purposes.

I think you've misunderstood what they've said.
They've said they won't update the EqA but will update the GRA. 2 methods of achieving the same goal of making it clear that woman = adult human female for sex based exemptions in the EA.

Unless I've missed something in which case please provide a link. I don't think I have because I've been round this loop lots in the run up to the election. This is why I'm saying I don't want to bicker about meanings.

Do you have anything to say about Badenochs comments on NMW? In fact her comments generally would suggest she'd be in favour of scrapping winter fuel allowance as she doesn't think the tax payer should be funding these things.

I'm sorry. It's shit.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-kemi-badenoch-blasts-cost-27460465.amp

🤔

Maybe we can talk about what Badenoch thinks...on a thread about Badenoch

OK. Badenoch has said she thinks that the way Labour have cut WFA from the very poorest of pensioners is wrong (even though she does agree it should be means tested). There are other ways of means testing that wouldn't leave the most vulnerable cold this winter. Martin Lewis has outlined how this could be done.

To make money from this policy Labour are counting on the fact that the 800,000 pensioners entitled to PC won't make a claim. If all of them claimed the saving by cutting WFA would be wiped out. They know who will be most affected by this policy and they don't care.

She's saying both. She's a small state Tory. Which means she believes in less regulation, fewer workers' rights etc. because these are constraints on competition and profits.

Even if she had infact said that I would have disagreed strongly with the position but I don’t think we should have things we can’t say or talk about. My understanding was that she was talking about regulations on small businesses. I think maternity pay should go up. If you want working women to have kids it has to be more financially feasible.