Portas: Give mums as much maternity leave as they want
MOTHERS should be able to take as long as they want off work on maternity leave and be paid in full, the Government’s former High Street Tsar said yesterday.
Retail guru and TV personality Mary Portas said restrictions on maternity leave were holding back too many women from having children.
The self-proclaimed Queen of Shops said mothers should not even have to tell their employer when they plan to return to work.
Last night her radical solution was ridiculed by the business community.
One business leader said Mrs Portas’s proposal would ‘bankrupt most of British business’, while a top economist said her plans would put off firms from hiring ‘women of child-bearing age’.
Speaking to an audience of business leaders at the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit, Mrs Portas said: ‘I genuinely believe we need to sort out maternity.
‘I think you should be paid fully. I’ve just done it with two of our directors. I’ve just paid them [in full], and you see the love that comes back.
‘They come in with a baby under their arm, breast-feeding, they hold meetings – you don’t put a time-scale on this.’
Mrs Portas, who was made the Government’s shops tsar in 2011, added: ‘I do think it’s the one biggest thing that stops women from taking that big leap and it shouldn’t do, because the most important thing, that so many of us do, is have children.
‘I would absolutely say to businesses, pay them while they’re off, and then they’ll have to work out how, and where, support gets given at home.’
John Longworth, the former boss of the British Chambers of Commerce who served on the board of Asda, said: ‘I imagine it would bankrupt most of British businesses if we do that.’
The proposal would be especially harmful to small and medium sized businesses, he added.
Ruth Lea, a veteran economist, said such a move would make employers reluctant to take on women of childbearing age and to impose it on employers would be ‘counterproductive’.
Currently firms have to offer statutory maternity pay for 39 weeks.
Mothers must receive a minimum of 90 per cent of their average weekly earnings for the first six weeks. For the remaining 33 weeks, they are entitled to a minimum of £139.58 or 90 per cent of weekly earnings – whichever is lower.
Mrs Portas has three children, including two from her first marriage to Graham Portas. She subsequently married Melanie Rickey and the couple had a son, Horatio, in 2012 after IVF treatment.