The row over UK maternity pay

Another day, another politician "doing their bit to slow down the fight for working parents", said Cosmopolitan.

Conservative leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch was asked whether she thought the UK's maternity pay was at the right level. "Statutory maternity pay is a function of tax," the magazine reported her telling Times Radio. "We're taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive."

The shadow housing secretary called for greater "personal responsibility". She said: "There was a time when there wasn't any maternity pay and people were having more babies." 

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The former minister for women and equalities "came under furious attack" after her words were taken to mean that she believed the UK's maternity pay was excessive, said Mail Online. "Of course I believe in maternity pay!" Badenoch later clarified on X. "Of course maternity pay isn't excessive … no mother of three kids thinks that."

'Less than half the National Living Wage'

The UK's taxpayer-funded maternity pay gives mothers 90% of their weekly earnings for the first six weeks of leave, then £184.03 or 90% of weekly earnings – whichever is lower – for the next 33 weeks. That's "some of the lowest among comparable countries", said Cosmopolitan. Is it any wonder that nearly three in five women "have to return early from maternity leave for financial reasons?"

Has Badenoch "actually tried raising a baby on an income that's only 47% of the National Living Wage", the writer asked. Given that her husband is an investment banker, I doubt it.

Badenoch's words are a "toxic blend of patronising misogyny", said Vanessa Feltz in the Daily Express. Women on maternity leave are not "reclining indolently upon lavishly upholstered chaises longues imagining the world owes them a living". 

Juggling motherhood with a job or career is "an emotionally and financially crushing challenge". Childcare costs are "exorbitant" – and many women are delaying having children because "they fear financial privation". 

But having a baby isn't a "hobby or recreational side hustle"; it is an "essential cog in the UK's hulking great capitalist machine", said Anna Whitehouse in The Times. Mothers are raising the next generation of employees, practically for free. 

Yet maternity pay is spoken about like it's "some sort of favour rather than a statutory right", said Suzanne Moore in The Telegraph. But for self-employed people, or those on short-term contracts, it is "a joke". And across the board, from rising costs to lack of support, there seems to be "a concerted effort" to make everything as difficult as possible for mothers. Frankly, anyone who has a baby these days is "completely mad". 

A fifth of women are choosing not to have children, and they're the ones "making a sensible choice economically". Moore "would have thought a Conservative leadership candidate would respect that".

Of course, tax is a distribution of resources from one group to another, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Isn't that what pensions are? Or society? "If maternity leave is an excessive redistribution of resources, what is the right amount? None?"

A 'generous' system

"Oh pull the other one," said The Telegraph's deputy comment editor Annabel Denham. How wearyingly predictable. The "cavalcade of those queuing up to skewer Badenoch" ignores what she actually said. 

Badenoch doesn't want to "abolish maternity pay or drag us back to the 1970s". She simply "does not believe women should be chained to their kitchens for a life of servitude". She was talking about Britain's excessive regulations, not maternity pay. And even if Badenoch were querying maternity pay, "she'd be within her rights". 

It costs the Department for Work and Pensions about £3.1 billion per year, forecast to increase to more than £4 billion by 2028-29. That is "one of the most generous" systems in the world, and the available leave is nearly three times the EU minimum requirement of 14 weeks. 

Those "tirelessly clamouring for more" never seem to consider whether long periods out of the workplace could actually "damage future career paths". If you want to help mothers, "stop treating women in labour like conduits", fix our inadequate maternity services, and deregulate childcare to bring down costs. But "enough of this feigned outrage".

This row is also "part of a pattern", one in which Badenoch thinks she is saying one thing and the media hears something "very different", said The Spectator's assistant editor Isabel Hardman. "That can be difficult when you're in power. It's even harder when, as a party of opposition, people only listen briefly to you anyway."