KEMI Badenoch yesterday sparked a row by hinting maternity pay for new working mums was excessive.
The Tory leadership hopeful suggested the 39-week statutory pay was part of a regulatory burden that was crippling businesses and said mothers should take more personal responsibility for their finances.
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She also argued women were having more babies when the support did not exist.
Although she later tried to clarify her views, her comments dominated the first day of the Tory party conference, with rivals and critics pouncing on her as “out of touch”.
Kicking off day one of the annual get-together in Birmingham, the Shadow Communities Secretary told Times Radio: “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.”
Pressed on whether she thought maternity pay was 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.”
And when asked how struggling families could afford to have children without support, Ms Badenoch shot 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.”
Statutory maternity pay starts at 90 per cent of average weekly earnings for six weeks.
For the next 33 weeks, it falls to the lowest of either £184.03 or 90 per cent of the mother’s average pay.
The ex-Cabinet Minister, a mother of three young children, has since clarified her remarks, insisting she believed in maternity pay and that she meant the regulatory burden on businesses had gone too far.
She said: “I don’t shy from difficult topics, but I won’t be misrepresented. Of course, culture matters but we need to talk about integration. Of course, maternity pay isn’t excessive…no mother of three kids thinks that.
“But we must talk about the burden of excessive business regulation otherwise we might as well be the Labour Party.”
But her rivals were quick to twist the knife as reports surfaced that Ms Badenoch, married to a City banker, once chose to resign rather than take maternity leave when she was head of digital operations at the Spectator magazine.
One rival camp branded the intervention her “Andrea Leadsom moment”, recalling the disastrous gaffe that sank Leadsom’s 2016 bid when she suggested being a mother made her more qualified to be PM.
Another sneered: “Kemi’s mad ideas are the only thing that could send our party’s polling even lower.”
Throughout the day, Tory leadership contenders Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, and James Cleverly all publicly distanced themselves from the remarks, making it clear they did not agree maternity pay was too high.
Meanwhile, Labour frontbencher Ellie Reeves hit out: “It is symptomatic of the Conservative Party as a whole that this is the kind of intervention that one of their leadership contenders is coming out with.”
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Her comments were echoed by Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, who described Ms Badenoch as “hopelessly out of touch”.
The row completely overshadowed the Shadow Communities Secretary’s attempt to promote her hard-nosed policy on immigration on the first day of conference.
Ms Badenoch yesterday argued on the BBC that a “shared culture and a shared identity” was essential for those who want to live in the UK.
Asked which cultures in particular are less valid, she replied: “Lots… cultures that believe in child marriage.. or that women don’t have equal rights.”
Mr Jenrick told the same show that immigration was also top of his list of problems to solve.
Mr Jenrick and Mr Tugendhat argued the November 2 leadership race end date should be brought forward so the Tories could get on with holding new PM Sir Keir Starmer to account.
BoJo in coup bid on May
FORMER Chancellor Philip Hammond tried to lure Boris Johnson into a rebel alliance against then-PM Theresa May.
It came the day after the disastrous 2017 election, Mr Johnson says in his memoir Unleashed.
Mr Hammond was prepared to oust Ms May and hand him the keys to No 10.
But Mr Johnson declined.
He said: “Perhaps I should have gone in with Phil to tell old grumpy-knickers that her time was up.
“I could see if that if Phil and I launched some breakfast coup, people’s general fury would immediately turn on me.”
By Noah Hoffman
Rishi: ‘End war’
RISHI Sunak appealed for the Tories to stop the infighting — warning it could cost them a return to Downing Street.
The ex-PM, awaiting his successor as leader, told the party: “Whoever wins, give them your backing.
“We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We must not nurse old grudges but build new friendships. We must always remember what unites us rather than obsess over where we might differ.
“Because when we turn in on ourselves we lose and the country ends up with a Labour government.”
He said the Tories couldn’t let Sir Keir Starmer “rewrite history” with doom-and-gloom forecasts — and that the Tories left the country with inflation back on target and the fastest growing economy in the G7.
Mr Sunak also attacked Labour’s “cruel” decision to bin the winter fuel allowance, worth up to £300.
By Ryan Sabey