Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Boateng on securing this debate. I congratulate him in particular on his speech, which made an unanswerable case for ethnicity pay gap reporting.

Fairness on pay is a key issue for all workers, which is why the TUC was always in favour of gender pay gap reporting and why now the TUC, joined by the CBI and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is in favour of ethnicity pay gap reporting. In the context of the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, calls have clearly intensified for race equality and, as has been said, a petition to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting was delivered to Her Majesty’s Government last July. This, of course, followed the McGregor-Smith review of race in the workplace already referenced. That, as my noble friend said, is emblazoned with the slogan:

“The time for talking is over. Now is the time to act.”


But the Government did not act on the recommendations that they should legislate to make larger businesses publish their ethnicity data by salary band to show progress. As is frequently the case, the Government consulted and found difficulties, and the results of this consultation have not, in fact, been published.

One of the difficulties put forward, as I understand it, is the issue of sample size and workplace segregation. However, Professor Susan Milner of the University of Bath says:

“Pay gap reporting in its current form”—


bear in mind that 11% of companies do produce data—

“is not meant to be a robust statistical tool. It provides a snapshot of workforce composition and pay at any given point.”

The point of pay gap reporting is to oblige employers to examine their data and work out what disparities might exist. This is why the National Education Union conducts a survey of pay, and while it does not specifically conclude that discrimination is taking place, it provides figures which the employers of teachers should perhaps consider. It is the largest database of teacher pay data, given that the DfE does not collect meaningful data on this basis. Headlines from that recent survey include that 85%—not enough, in my view—of white British teachers had received the national recommended cost of living award, but even worse, appallingly, only 77% of other ethnic minority teachers had received it. Only 7% of white British teachers were denied pay progression, but 11% of other ethnic origin teachers were so denied. In fact, in finer detail, 15% of Indian teachers and 14% of African teachers, as self-identified in the survey, had not received this pay progression. At the very least, these figures suggest a requirement to publish a policy on pay progression at school level in every school.

I close my remarks by returning to Professor Susan Milner. She concludes that while ethnicity pay gap reporting will provide an imperfect picture, it is still a much-needed one that organisations can learn from to improve their employment practice. At a time when there is evidence of worsening employment conditions for people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds due to the pandemic, government action is more necessary than ever. I believe that she is right. I hope the Minister can offer some hope for action.