Badenoch stresses her belief in maternity pay following backlash

Kemi Badenoch has said that she does “believe in maternity pay” after she faced criticism from her fellow Conservative leadership candidates over comments in which she appeared to criticise the statutory benefit.

Robert Jenrick said that the party should be “firmly on the side of parents” in the wake of Ms Badenoch’s interview on the first morning of Conservative Party conference.

Tom Tugendhat said he was unaware of the context of the comments, but it is “important that women have the ability to choose how to live their lives”.

Ms Badenoch said on X, formerly Twitter, that “contrary to what some have said”, she does support maternity pay.

She wrote: “Contrary to what some have said, I clearly said the burden of regulation on businesses had gone too far … of course I believe in maternity pay! Watch the clip for the truth.”

Speaking to Times Radio earlier on Sunday, the shadow communities secretary appeared described statutory maternity pay as “a function of tax”, and said: “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.”

Arguing that businesses are closing because “the burden of regulation is too high”, she added: “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.”

Following the criticism a person close to Ms Badenoch’s campaign said that “infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat” and accused other campaigns of seeking to “score political hits”.

This conference is the first since the party’s general election loss in July, and  Ms Badenoch’s, Mr Tugendhat’s, Mr Jenrick’s and James Cleverly’s race for the party leadership is taking centre stage.

Ahead of his final conference as Tory leader, Rishi Sunak said that his party should “learn the lessons” of their general election defeat and “reflect” on their period in government.

Writing for The House magazine, Mr Sunak described the conference as an “important moment for our party”.

He added: “This is our first conference in opposition since 2009. Of course, we need to learn the lessons of our defeat: we did not get everything right in government – no government ever does – and we do now need to reflect on that. But we should not forget what we have achieved since 2010.”

The party won 121 seats in the July election, down hundreds on their results in the 2019 general election.

Tees Valley mayor Lord Ben Houchen warned that his party has a “huge job to do” to regain the support of its own voter base and to get back the votes that “bled” to Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats during the election.

Speaking to journalists at the conference, he said that the party needs to “reconnect” with people they lost.

“There’s a huge job to do with our own base, with people who voted Labour who’ve voted Conservative before, with people who are voting Lib Dem now particularly in parts of the south and the South East, and those Reform voters who cost us a huge number of seats as a result of the fact that they didn’t vote for a Labour Government, because actually, not that many people in this country do want a Labour Government, but they absolutely didn’t want a Conservative government,” Lord Houchen said.

“We’ve got to reconnect with those people.”

The first day of the gathering in Birmingham also heard from former mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street.

Mr Street lost narrowly to Labour’s Richard Parker in May this year, at the same time as the Conservatives lost hundreds of seats in the local elections.

Mr Street said that Conservatism is “still really strong” and there is support for “the national fightback to begin here in the West Midlands”.

Addressing delegates, he said: “I so wish the context of today was different.

“I dearly wanted to speak to you as the West Midlands mayor, not the former mayor of the West Midlands, I wanted to show you that moderate Conservatism is still a winning force, sadly that was not to be.”

“Take heart ladies and gentleman, there’s no debate, Conservatism is still really strong,” he added.