Maternity pay is “excessive” and people should exercise “more personal responsibility”, Kemi Badenoch has said.
In an interview with Times Radio, the Conservative leadership contender and shadow communities secretary appeared to criticise statutory maternity pay as she said the Government was doing “too much”.
Describing statutory maternity pay as “a function of tax”, she said: “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.”
Arguing that businesses were closing because “the burden of regulation is too high”, she added: “We need to allow businesses, especially small businesses, to make more of their own 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 environment where people can work and people can have more freedom to make their individual decisions.”
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.”
First introduced in 1987, statutory maternity pay is available only to women who are employed and earning an average of at least £123 per week.
It provides 90% of a person’s salary for six weeks, and then whichever is lower of 90% of their salary or £184.03 per week for the next 33 weeks, and the payment is liable for income tax and national insurance.
Robert Jenrick, the current frontrunner for the Conservative leadership, later told Times Radio he thought current levels of statutory maternity pay were “fair”.
He said: “Of course, there are always ways in which we could seek to improve, but it’s a balance, isn’t it? Because we’ve got to ensure that working mums and families have the support they need, but also that we can have the right labour laws in this country so that we maintain one of our great strengths as a country, which is a flexible labour market, which has enabled us to have record levels of employment, even in bad times.”
Ms Badenoch has pitched her leadership campaign as a call for the state to do less, arguing that the Government should focus on what it does well such as “defence and domestic security”, and opposed policies such as the football regulator or the proposed widening of the smoking ban.
Joeli Brearley, founder of campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, said it was “absolute nonsense” to suggest businesses were closing because of statutory maternity pay as businesses were able to recoup the cost from HMRC.
She told the PA news agency: “Statutory maternity pay is absolutely vital. Most families need two incomes to survive, and so without SMP, women would be forced to return to work almost immediately after giving birth.
“Maternity leave has been proven to substantially decrease infant mortality, whilst improving the mental and physical health of women.
“Conservatives are meant to be the party of family – this statement from Badenoch is yet another example of dog-whistle politics that would actively damage families, businesses and society as a whole.”
