Conservative Party leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch created a controversy by suggesting maternity pay is “excessive“. But Tory chair Richard Fuller responded by coming out to brag about how his party actually “brought in statutory maternity pay”. But that’s a simplistic and misleading assessment of how maternity pay arose.
The history of maternity support
Back in 1911, the National Insurance Act under Liberal politician David Lloyd George legislated for a universal maternal health benefit. Then, in 1946, Labour’s Clement Attlee extended on the act’s scope. The changes meant that:
Mothers received an allowance for each child if they had been paying National Insurance in addition to a lump sum payable on the birth of each child.
Payments included a maternity grant, attendance allowance, and maternity allowance. As a government document notes, the maternity allowance “originated as a contributory benefit introduced in 1948” and “was originally paid for 13 weeks but increased to 18 weeks in 1953”.
Later, under Labour’s Harold Wilson, “the Employment Protection Act 1975 prohibited dismissal on grounds of pregnancy and granted maternity leave”. As Labour’s Jo Richardson argued during the debates surrounding maternity rights that year, “most European countries make much better provision for maternity pay than we do”.
As an academic paper outlined in 2003, the Conservatives really came into the story in 1987. In that year, “Maternity Pay was relabelled Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) with minor administrative changes”. But as the Independent reported in 2010:
In 1987, the universal maternity grant was removed. State-paid maternity allowance was restricted.
And it described European criticism of the state of British employment law in 1988:
The only state not to provide full statutory maternity leave, Britain had blocked the adoption of a draft directive setting out minimum standards on parental leave.
So the Tories were hardly at the forefront of maternity rights. If anything, they were often holding them back.
Richard Fuller(Tory Party Chair): "The Tory party brought in statutory maternity pay." 👀
but
Statutory maternity pay was introduced in July 1948 under Clement Attlee, a Labour Prime Minister.#KayBurley pic.twitter.com/pqoxIDhaNP
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) September 30, 2024
Maternity pay needs a big boost
Tories like Fuller and Badenoch, of course, have a history of exaggerating or misleading people on these issues.
A UCL blog, for example, noted that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s claim in 2023 that “the UK has the best maternity rights in the world” was “an odd statement and contrary to international evidence”.
And in the same year, William Cash suggested that “the UK actually has 52 weeks of maternity pay”. That was also wrong. In reality, “only six of these 52 weeks attract well-paid income replacement, at 90% of previous salary; the next 33 weeks are paid but at a low flat-rate (£156.66 per week), while the remaining 13 weeks are unpaid”.
Also, it’s important to point out that over a decade of Tory rule has hardly helped the situation.
For example, a survey for Unison revealed in February 2024 that “a quarter of women have gone without eating while receiving only the statutory maternity rate”. Many women, particularly from minority groups, are in insecure jobs with low pay that don’t allow them statutory maternity benefits.
Indeed, maternity pay tends to be higher for women with higher-paying jobs. Overall, the vast majority of women who took part in the survey had money worries before and after their children’s birth. And over half went back to work “before they were ready” for the same reason.
Unison and its survey provider, Maternity Action, urged the government to make changes. They insisted on the need to double statutory maternity pay to meet the equivalent of the national minimum wage.
After the backlash over Badenoch’s words, she later corrected herself, saying “of course maternity pay isn’t excessive”. And on that, if little else, we can completely agree.
Featured image via the Canary
