Closing the gender pay gap: Lords presses government for action | House of Lords

my lords the gender pay Gap has fallen by approximately a quarter in the last decade it was a conservative government that introduced gender pay Gap reporting building on the robust equal pay protections already in the equality act and this is motivated employers to look at their pay data and improve workplace equality to accelerate progress we've supported legislation to enhance flexible working extend redundancy protection for those on maternity leave and uce car as leave thank the no lady for

that that answer and particularly welcome the flexible working initiative I wonder if the government has made any assessment of how quickly we might get to equal pay given those Endeavors and reduce the expected date of equal pay of 2044 and can I invite the noble lady the minister support labor policy that we should enshrine in law a full right to equal pay for black Asian and ethnic minority people and disabled people and of course do phasing in to help employers can I invite the noble lady t

he minister to say that she thinks that's a good idea um so in response to the noble lady's first question as she understands very well there are a number of different factors that influence how quickly uh the gender pay Gap uh will decline but obviously there is so much resarch now on the value of a diverse Workforce and how that improves uh profitability and competitiveness I think we hope uh it will accelerate in relation to um uh ethnicity pay Gap uh reporting uh the noble lady will be aware

this is 2.3% so much smaller uh than the gender pay Gap um and we are working on promoting our guidance on how to address this through employer groups in relation to um uh the number of in relation to disability reporting uh following the successful Court action uh we are reviewing our responses to the consultation my lords um with the minister agree that the value of any employee um is should be based on the contribution that they're going to make to the organization uh not what they were earn

ing before research by the charity foret found that uh 61% of job applicants uh asked about to previous salary history said that it damaged their confidence to negotiate a better salary so wouldn't she agree that this requirement bakes in gender race and disability uh inequality and prevents people on Lower salaries ever making the salary strides that they need well of course these were some of the questions that we um were exploring in our pay transparency pilot which looked at the impact of pu

tting requiring employers to put salary information into their job recruitment aders Ms and also not asking about previous um salaries and we do plan to publish the methodology for that so that employers um can adopt it um and we will also be doing more work to look at the challenges of implementation does my Noble friend the minister share my concern in particular about the pay Gap the gender pay Gap in pension terms which just accumulates in historic terms to create a very serious problem in t

he future um my Noble friend is absolutely right and uh DWP published an official measure of the gender pensions Gap in June of last year which is currently 35% uh in private pensions the are forms that we've brought in which will mean that uh 3 million women will benefit by over 550 a year by 2030 and that uh the gender pay the pensions Gap will equalize by the early 2040s over 10 years earlier than under previous legislation my lords um following on the previous supplementary question I think

the uh not barones the minister is referring to achieving equality in state pensions the big problem and what's leading to the uh the most of the gender pay pension Gap is the difference in the caring responsibilities where most care unpaid care is undertaken by women The Minister's correct in saying that they've identified the problem could she give a commitment to actually come up with a worthwhile solution well I think that there as I've already said the government is working on a number of u

h different aspects uh of this but obviously a critical part in relation to uh maternity leave and the impact that the noble Lord rightly says one can see on the gender pay Gap um is our uh huge commitment to expanding the child care offer so that no women uh will be unable to return to work for a lack of child care support just produced a list of employers that paid below the minimum wage and in some case for many many years doesn't this show that we need stronger enforcement powers and more pe

ople checking that employeers are doing their Duty and paying their workers correctly well I think um uh the noble Lord if I've understood correctly forgive if I haven't but is potentially conflating different things obviously um the minimum wage is a legal uh requirement um and the Equal Pay legislation addresses the same uh in relation uh to gender and other aspects what we are seeking to do through uh enabling activities around flexible working for example but also maximizing transparency uh

and celebrating the success of those employers who have a truly diverse Workforce is to use multiple levers to get to the same goal my lords uh since we've got such progress in dealing with the gender pay Gap might we also turn our attention to trying to persuade employers of the importance of helping parents most of them women who have taken time out from their careers to bring up children back into the workforce with the same status at which they left it um um my Noble friend is absolutely rig

ht and obviously part of that uh is about the time uh that it takes for working parents uh to get back um into the workforce and again I would say our commitment um starting this April and building up so that there will be 30 hours of free child care for every uh family with a child 9 months old and above will be crucial for achieving this my Lord I I'd like to ask the minister about mandatory reporting um as there is mandatory reporting and needs to be more but at the same time when is the gove

rnment going to get tougher on on taking proceedings against those companies who don't report in their um annual report and who do not uh continue to to ensure that the Equal Pay Act is is is committed to um because there there is there's not any companies really being taken to court on this issue and the government needs to step up on this well I'm I'm more than happy to um take that back to the department obviously the mandatory reporting applies to companies with more than 250 50 employees I

wasn't aware of the cases the noble lady refers to but I'm happy to pick that up my lords W flexible working has made major strides for women since it was introduced but what if companies of a certain size were also required to include possible flexible working options in their recruitment uh when they're advertising for these posts um she may be aware that a recent trial in Zurich led to a massive third more women being hired for senior positions so wouldn't the minister agree with me that a si

milar trial in the UK would be worth undertaking here well I think a number of uh businesses do offer flexible working from day one there's obviously a legal duty to do so from 26 weeks employment but I think you know as as all Noble Lords will recognize we've seen a tremendous change in patterns of work following the pandemic particularly flexibly between the workplace and home and I think there's increasing natural adoption of those approaches my lords in relation to the gender pension deficit

is it the case that um when women are getting divorced and they may not have legal advice that they're not taking the correct decisions in terms of assuming that the the matrimonial former matrimonial home is the largest asset and not getting the pension split on divorce so could we have some data that actually illuminates this and some better communication to women in those situations my neble friend as makes a very good point and I think that's something that I would be happy to meet with her

afterwards and explore how we could make that a reality