Kemi Badenoch 'quit magazine job rather than take maternity leave'

Kemi Badenoch quit her job rather than go on maternity leave when she had her second child because she thought it would be 'unfair' on her employer to take it.

The Tory leadership favourite, who is embroiled in a row over maternity pay, is said to have resigned as digital chief with the Spectator magazine in 2016 instead of taking her statutory time off. 

In Blue Ambition, an unauthorised biography of the former business secretary by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, the magazine's editor, Fraser Nelson, said he was very grateful to her for doing it. 

He told the author 'she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was on maternity leave'. 

It comes as Ms Badenoch tried to recover from a row over comments she made about maternity pay being an 'excessive' tax burden on firms.

And it was not the only time she did not take her available maternity period. In 2019 she cut it short so she could campaign for the December general election after having her third child.

After being re-elected in Saffron Walden she later took the MPs' oath of allegiance while carrying her daughter in a sling.

She had earlier told the Mail: 'There is no such thing as maternity leave in an election. You can't tell the voters, ''Sorry, I am looking after my baby.'' It's part of the deal.' 

At the time she quit the Spectator, Ms Badenoch was already married to her investment banker husband Hamish, meaning there was another source of family income. 

She was also a member of the London Assembly at the time, with a salary of £56,269.

But Mr Nelson told her biographer: 'Having discovered she was pregnant, she told me she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was on maternity leave. So she resigned to have her baby.

'She would have been within her rights not to have done that. As an employer, I really appreciated it. We're a small company. We'd have struggled to find someone decent to fill her post as stand-in digital chief while she was on maternity leave.

'Media is so fast moving that tech leadership matters and a year is a long time to lose. But we didn't lose any time at all, thanks to the way she handled it. It was an unusual thing to do. She did it out of loyalty to the magazine and, moreover, out of a sense of decency, I think.'

The Tory leader hopeful stressed her determination to make things more 'comfortable' for would-be parents as she spoke to activists at party conference in Birmingham.

She also said that having a family was 'probably the most meaningful thing that any of us are ever going to do'. 

Allies have complained of a 'Stop Kemi' campaign by supporters of rival Robert Jenrick, who seized on her loose comments yesterday about work benefits for mothers.

Answering questions at a Conservative Women's Organisation fringe, Ms Badenoch was asked how she would prop up flagging UK birth rates.

'I think that there are things that we have to do to make sure that we make life comfortable for those people who are… starting families,' she replied - listing examples such as maternity pay, childcare provision and housing.

'A lot of people have fewer children because they start having children later.

'And so they just can't have as many as perhaps they might have liked. Some people feel that they can't afford children, I often think that too many people are worried about the money more than they need to be.

'But we need to give people confidence. People are scared to have families, they're worried about whether they can afford them, they're worried about whether they will have birth trauma.'

Ms Badenoch said people 'need to talk about families like… the amazing thing that they are, that having a family is probably the most meaningful thing that any of us are ever going to do'.