Why did Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch choose to come after maternity pay?
Was it the pressure of an open mic and the chance to steal headlines from her fellow contenders for the party’s top job?
Does she really think the money given to new mothers is excessive or did her views on cutting red tape for business come out a little clunky?
Having revisited the interview transcripts, I’m not convinced what she said was taken entirely out of context and reducing the size of the state is likely to make her very popular with the party members whose votes she desperately needs.
However as she has since, inevitably given the backlash, rowed back on her comments perhaps we’ll never know. But I wonder if she’s done parents a favour?
For those who think maternity leave is little more than a year off work – let’s be clear about the numbers.
New mothers start at 90 per cent of their weekly earnings for the first six weeks and then this is reduced to either £184.03 a week, or 90% of the mother’s weekly earnings, for 33 weeks, whichever is the lowest figure. That money is also subject to tax and national insurance.
That equates to 44% of the National Minimum Wage – for well over half a year.
It’s also less than what many pensioners receive – with the full state pension currently standing at £221 a week – at a stage in life when you’ve probably significantly higher outgoings, student debt to repay and other mouths to feed.
Meanwhile, the basic annual salary of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons is £91,346 since April 2024 – plus expenses.
It’s also worth nothing that if Kemi Badenoch truly has concerns about the impact on business – most can claim back the majority of the statutory maternity wage they pay out, so at the very least this is about the cost to government and the country, not companies.
Rewind 30 or 40 years and you could argue there was less need for maternity pay that reflected the living wage. Mothers, mostly, remained at home and outgoings – in particular housing or mortgage costs – weren’t based on two full-time wages.
The same cannot be said today where two pay packets are needed to cover the bills and parental leave drags many into debt.
We also live in a country, and at a time, when little value is also placed on the work motherhood really entails.
Where many assume a year off work (or more) is all iced coffees and soft play and there’s a desire to get mothers back into workplaces as soon as possible.
And yet, like many political parties across the world, the Conservative party wants (needs) women to have more babies, fully aware of the problems our falling birth rates will ultimately create.
If that’s to happen, proper and honest debates need to be had about how little financial support is out there for those raising the next generation of tax payers and how that compares to benefit payments, pensions or even MPs’ salaries?
Why Kemi Badenoch chose to bring up maternity pay, and the impact her words have on her chance to become party leader, is one for the political commentators.
But in doing so she, unintentionally perhaps, shone the national spotlight on how paltry our statutory maternity pay is and that might ultimately do all new parents a favour.
