MP Siobhan Baillie sent ‘abusive messages’ on maternity leave

An MP on maternity leave has got “abusive messages” from some constituents for taking spoil day to investigate cross-check after her toddler, her internet site of job said.

Stroud Conservative MP Siobhan Baillie, who gave initiating final week, has had a “risk of abusive emails, calls and social media posts”.

Ms Baillie’s internet site of job said it might possibly presumably well possess “no be troubled reporting people to police”.

It said she planned to spend a “minimum of 4 weeks maternity leave”.

Senior Parliamentary Assistant Harriet Butcher, from Ms Baillie’s internet site of job, said: “Sadly, as an internet site of job, we possess now got an risk of abusive emails, calls and social media posts from constituents with regard to Siobhan’s resolution to spend maternity leave following the initiating of her daughter final week.

“These people appear to deem the 2010 Equality Act would now not practice to a girl because she is an MP.

“It does practice and Siobhan has an absolute magnificent enshrined in legislation to spend maternity leave. At this time, it is some distance her design to full so for on the least four weeks, which is significantly lower than she is legally entitled to.”

‘No longer an act of God’

Ms Butcher said feedback had incorporated “having a toddler is now not an excuse for now not responding to my e mail” and one other constituent wrote “maternity leave is now not an act of God – it is some distance a protracted-established lifestyles’s circumstance that can must were planned neatly in advance for”.

She said: “Why anyone would be ‘astonished’ a mother would want to spend spoil day to possess and bond with her daughter we to find unbelievable, especially when thorough preparations were made to fabricate certain it is some distance highly grand business as traditional whereas Siobhan is away.”

Ms Butcher added the “views of these people are thankfully very grand in the minority” and said her team was once receiving give a own to from “the full various Gloucestershire MPs and their locations of work”.

Maternity rights in the UK

• Women folk are entitled to spend as a lot as 52 weeks maternity leave
• They possess to spend on the least two weeks’ leave after the toddler is born (or four weeks in the occasion that they work in a producing facility)
• They’re eligible to be paid for six weeks at 90% of their moderate weekly earnings and 33 weeks at £149 per week or 90% of their moderate weekly earnings (if lower)
• Fathers can spend two weeks’ statutory paternity leave at £149 a week