KEMI Badenoch has sparked outrage by branding maternity pay “excessive” and urging mothers to show “more personal responsibility”.
The Tory leadership hopeful warned businesses are being crippled by the “burden of regulation”, hinting generous maternity benefits are part of the problem.
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She argued women were having “more babies” when the benefit didn’t exist.
As the Tory leadership contest burst into life, the Shadow Communities Secretary told Times Radio: “Maternity pay varies depending on who you work for, but it is a function, where it’s statutory maternity pay.
“It 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.”
Pressed on whether statutory maternity pay is too 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 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.”
Challenged on how this affects families who can’t afford to have a baby, she fired back: “We need to have more personal responsibility.
“There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay, and people were having more babies.”
Her comments were immediately torn apart by campaigners and other contenders in the Tory leadership race.
A source from a rival camp told The Sun: “Kemi’s mad ideas are the only thing that can send our party’s polling even lower.
“She has got some gall lecturing other women about being lazy. It’s a disgrace.”
Joeli Brearley, founder of campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, branded her remarks as “yet another example of dog-whistle politics”.
She told the PA news agency: “It is absolute nonsense to suggest that businesses are closing because of statutory maternity pay.
“Statutory maternity pay is not a burden to business as they recoup the cost from HMRC. Small business recoup 100 per cent of the cost plus 3 per cent in small employer’s relief.”
She added: “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.”
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 per cent of a person’s salary for six weeks, and then whichever is lower of 90 per cent of their salary or £184.03 per week for the next 33 weeks, and the payment is liable for income tax and national insurance.
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”.
This morning, the former Cabinet Minister also unleashed on immigrants who loathe our culture – and says we have been “naive” to assume they will “abandon ancestral ethnic-hostilities at the border”.
A fired-up Ms Badenoch let rip on people coming from countries “where Israel is seen as an enemy”.
She said: “People who come here should want to live in Britain, they should love the country and want it to succeed. We are not a dormitory. This is our home.”
But Ms Badenoch fiercely denied singling out Muslims, saying “many Muslim people love Israel.”
The Shadow Cabinet Minister defended saying some cultures were “less valid” – including authoritarian those that inflict child marriage or curb women’s rights.
Ms Badenoch said: “I think that cultures where women are told that they should not work, I would knock on doors… and you would see somebody at the door who says I can’t speak to you I will get my husband. I don’t think that is as equally valid as our culture.
She also opened the door to quitting the ECHR in a shift widely viewed as trying to neutralise the appeal of new favourite Robert Jenrick, who is pledging to leave.