'Six weeks maternity pay after traumatic birth left me feeling like it was a crime to have a baby"

Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has sparked outrage saying maternity pay has "gone too far" but Labour peer, Baroness Harriet Harman, says we shouldn't go back to the Thatcher years

Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch sparked outrage when she said maternity pay “had gone too far” and described the burden on taxpayers to fund it as “excessive.” Mother to three children, born to her and banker husband Hamish Badenoch between 2013 and 2019, Ms Badenoch, 44, added: “The answer cannot be let the government help people to have babies.”

But Labour peer, Baroness Harriet Harman, herself a mother-of-three, who became the first ever Minister for Women in the 1990s, vehemently opposes Ms Badenoch’s claims, made in a radio interview on the first day of the Conservative Party Conference. Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, Baroness Harman says: “Instead of turning the clock back to the sort of Thatcherite notion that Kemi Badenoch is resurrecting, we should be looking to actually improve maternity pay, so that people can take their maternity leave.

"If you've got plenty of money, you don't have to break your heart going back to work earlier than you want to when your baby's not ready. Low income women do. Or they just feel they have to give up work and go on benefits.” Before Statutory Maternity Pay Regulations became law in 1987 - giving new mums 90% of their average weekly earnings for 6 weeks, then £184.03 a week or 90% of their average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for a further 33 weeks - there was little financial support for working mums.

The 1975 Employment Protection Act laid the foundations, by introducing some maternity pay, but it was only given for a maximum of 6 weeks, it was difficult to qualify for - meaning only about half of working mums got it - and amounts were minimal. Working women from past generations also say pregnancy at work was frowned upon. Before statutory maternity pay, the culture was for women to leave - and only to come back once reliable childcare was in place, to take small part-time jobs, or to stop working altogether.

Cheryl Parker’s daughter, Brenda, was born in 1974 - the year before any maternity legislation was brought in. Outraged by Ms Badenoch’s comments, Cheryl, 70, says: “Maternity pay is not excessive, women need to get what they can to look after their baby. It was so hard for me.” Cheryl, from Chesterfield , Derbyshire, was a nurse in the Army - until her pregnancy.

“I was four months along and I was asked to resign,” she says. “They said they had no maternity uniforms, and it was not a good look. It was five months before I had my baby and I had to leave with no pay.” Forced to rely on her soldier husband’s salary, the family struggled financially and, soon after having her baby, she found work in a nursing home - only to fall pregnant again 10 months later.

“I worked until three days before delivery and I went back three weeks after when I was breastfeeding,” she says. “It was very tiring. I looked after the children during the day and then went to my shift at night. In the evening I only had three hours of sleep. Society saw it that if you were pregnant, it was your fault. You wanted the baby so that was your fault. You can’t work so you give up work, then you go back when the baby is three weeks old.”

In her controversial radio interview, Ms Badenoch said: “Statutory 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.” Asked to clarify if she thinks maternity pay is “excessive,” she added: “I think it’s gone too far - too far the other way in terms of general business regulation.” She continued: “The exact amount of maternity pay in my view is neither here nor there.”

But Jemima Olchawski, CEO of women’s rights charity the Fawcett Society, says statutory maternity pay is essential for mums and their babies. “If you're asking women to survive with a new baby without any income, you are putting families and the life chances of those children at great risk,” she says.“You're putting huge pressures on women to return to work more quickly than they would like to. It strips away the right to have that time as a family and to have those important weeks and months with your baby.”

For mums like 91-year-old Frances Izzard, who was a machine driver at the Liverpool Tate and Lyle factory when she fell pregnant at 24 in 1956 with her first child, Anthony, there was no support. She says: “You worked until you could no longer work when you were too pregnant, and that was it. You got no pay. You didn’t get any help at all. It was difficult.”

Returning to work when Anthony was two-and-a-half, when she fell pregnant again after 10 months, seeing her as a valued employee, her boss supported her. She says: “When I had the second baby Peter, I was off with morning sickness but the manager came to see me, and said ‘we would love you to come back now.’ She said ‘we need you and if you come back and you're not well, we will let you lie down for an hour.’”

MPs receive full pay for six months while on maternity leave, meaning Baroness Harman, an MP for 42 years, was financially secure when she had her children Harry, 41, Joseph, 39, and Amy, 37. But, for most mothers, she says: “My generation stopped working after they had their children or they worked very small part time jobs.”

An ardent feminist, who dedicated her political career to fighting for gender equality and was the architect of the Equality Act 2010 which tackled workplace discrimination, Baroness Harman says she still faced negative workplace attitudes towards pregnant women. “There was no recognition at all, I was literally expected to vote (in the House of Commons ) all the time,” she says.

“Even now, I can't get used to the idea of seeing women showing their bumps because we kept ours hidden. I wore baggy dresses, hoping that people wouldn't see that I was pregnant again, because it would immediately hang a big question mark about whether you were going to carry on working.”

Rae Radford, 62, who lives near Ramsgate, Kent, missed getting the new statutory maternity pay by a year when working as a 999 call handler, she had her first son, Lee, in 1986. “I had 28 hours of labour and they couldn’t give me a C-section as there was no one to do it. They had to use forceps, and they wanted to break his shoulders. It was horrible,” she says, recalling her traumatic delivery.

But the maximum six weeks paid leave available at the time meant she had to return to work before she was ready. “That traumatic birth tipped me over into postnatal depression. I had to go back to work, otherwise we wouldn’t have a roof over our head. We were so skint,” says Rae, who was 23 when Lee was born.

“Sleep deprivation when you have a newborn is torture, and so I had to go to a full time job on next to no sleep and be responsible for a six week old baby. When I hear comments like those from Kemi Badenoch, it's outrageous. It feels like it's a crime to have a baby.”

Baroness Harman, who believes pay and conditions for new parents should be improved not reduced, is also keen for the focus to be turned on new dads. Statutory paternity pay was introduced in the UK in 2003, allowing eligible fathers to claim either 90% of weekly earnings or £140.98 a week (whichever is lower) for two weeks, during paternity leave.

Baroness Harman is calling for this to be increased, to take the onus off working mothers, saying: “A woman who takes time off, she's regarded as not committed to her job. That will change when men take the time off as well - and men will take the time off when they can afford to.”

Rae Radford agrees, adding: “Dads should have the time to bond with their babies too - but perhaps Kemi Badenoch would think that is too excessive!”

The Sugar Girls of Love Lane: Tales of Love, Loss and Friendship from Tate & Lyle’s Liverpool Refinery by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, is out now.