Kemi Badenoch quit her job instead of taking maternity leave

In an unauthorized biography of Ms Badenoch, Blue Ambition, by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, it is claimed that she decided to leave her job at the Spectator while pregnant with her second child so as not to upset her employer. She left office in 2016, the year before she was first elected as MP for Saffron Walden.

Fraser Nelson, who was the magazine’s editor at the time, said he “really appreciated” the gesture, as The Spectator was a small company that would have struggled to find someone capable of replacing her.

In quotes cited by Lord Ashcroft, he said: “After finding out she was pregnant, she told me she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was in maternity leave. So she quit to have her baby.

“She would have had the right not to do that. As an employer, I really appreciated it. We are a small business. We would have struggled to find someone decent to fill her role as back-up digital head while she was on maternity leave.

“Media is evolving so quickly that technology leadership is important and a year is a long time to waste. But we didn’t waste any time because of the way she handled the situation. It was an unusual thing to do. She did it out of loyalty to the magazine and, above all, out of decency, I think.

Regulations on maternity pay have “gone too far”

Speaking to Times Radio on Sunday, Ms Badenoch said regulations around maternity pay had “gone too far” and were hampering business with too much red tape.

Asked if the pay was set at the right level, she said: “Maternity pay varies depending on who you work for, but it is a function – when it comes to statutory maternity pay – a function of tax.

“Tax comes from people who work. We take from one group of people and give to another. This seems excessive to me.”

Statutory maternity pay is granted up to 39 weeks. It represents 90 percent of the average weekly salary before tax for the first six weeks. Over the following 33 weeks, new mothers receive a maximum of £184.03 – one of the lowest levels of statutory maternity pay in the Western world.

Asked if she thought it was excessive, Ms Badenoch said: “I think it has gone too far in the other direction 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 opinion, is neither here nor there. We need to make sure we create an environment where people can work and where they can have more freedom to make their individual decisions.