The maternity income guarantee promised by the Liberal Democrats today would offer a real break from the UK's miserably stingy track record on maternity pay and benefits - but still leaves much room for improvement.
The party plans to boost maternity pay - currently worth 90% of salary for six weeks, but then just £106 a week for another 20 weeks - to £170 a week for first-time mothers. This is the equivalent of the minimum wage. The money would help make the option of staying at home with a baby for its first six months a real choice for all, rather than a possibility only for better-off families.
The policy would do most to help mothers on the lowest incomes - particularly the three quarters of the 200,000 first time parents earning less than £22,000.
But though the move would help more mothers make a reality of the right to six months' leave, it ignores the further six months of unpaid leave entitlement, which many families find too costly to take up.
Labour will extend paid leave - albeit at the lower £106 rate - to nine months in 2007, and wants to increase that to a full year by the end of the next parliament.
The Lib Dems are not promising to match that, and their generosity is also confined only to first time mothers. Though it is true that first babies are the most expensive in terms of equipment, current maternity pay remains too low to prevent many women being forced back to work early.
