Equal Pay

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, it is a good idea to say at this point that the gender pay gap and equal pay are two different things, although both may exist in the same organisation. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that work needs to go on to encourage organisations to improve their gender pay gaps where they are wide. The EHRC and the Government are working with organisations that want to improve their situation. This is not something that has just been left on the shelf. The gender pay gap is at its lowest, but we still have further to go.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, the Resolution Foundation has estimated that Britain’s 1.6 million black, Asian and minority ethnic employees are losing out to the tune of £3.2 billion a year in wages compared with white colleagues doing the same work. We welcome the consultation that the Prime Minister launched in October to seek views on whether there should be mandatory reporting of ethnic pay gaps at work. We know that the diversity of the workforce is good for business, so does the Minister agree that the time has now come to introduce ethnic and minority pay gap reporting?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Organisations can indeed do that if they wish, but the noble Baroness raises an important point. Actually, gender pay gap reporting was the first step in what will be a long process. It had never been done before and we wondered before organisations reported what the compliance rate would be. As the noble Baroness will know, it was 100%. It is not that organisations do not want to go further—they do—but she is right that a gender and ethnically diverse workforce makes for a better workforce.