Kemi Badenochs’s first PMQs as Tory leader didn’t go well.
Kemi Badenoch attended her first PMQs as leader of the Conservative Party today. It didn’t go well.
In one of the first questions put to the prime minister, the Labour MP Jacob Collier criticised Badenoch’s widely reported comments about maternity pay. During the Tory leadership election, she suggested that maternity pay in the UK is ‘excessive’.
Collier said: “Every week, I meet hardworking families in Burton and Uttoxeter who are juggling raising their children and their family finances. When they hear the party opposite and their new leader say that maternity pay has gone too far, they are terrified about what this means for them.
“To ease the worry of thousands of hardworking families, can the prime minister please commit that he has no plans to change maternity pay, or to roll back the hard-won rights of working families?”
The prime minister responded by saying: “My answer is yes, and I don’t agree with the leader of the opposition when she says that maternity pay is excessive and that it’s gone too far.”
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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