Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we do not intend to create additional civil penalties at this time but we can review that if levels of compliance are not satisfactory. As the noble Baroness said, non-compliance will constitute an unlawful act and will fall within the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s existing enforcement powers under the Equality Act 2006. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing up this question and I am pleased to say that the trajectory is heading in a very positive direction.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I started working in 1970, when the Minister was just three years old. Of course, that was also the year of the Equal Pay Act. I would have been devastated had I discovered that, almost half a century later, I would be standing here still with an 18% pay gap. I ask the Minister to do two things. First, will she make sure that government investment is geared towards getting women into the highest-paid professions and industries, because, at the moment, women are mostly in low-paid industry? Secondly, could she possibly tell her Treasury colleagues that, through almost 90% of their tax and benefits changes relating to women, they are only adding insult to injury?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government, starting with the previous Prime Minister, are most certainly committed to the very ends that the noble Baroness seeks. Not only are women contributing to tax, but they also bring the huge benefit of increasing GDP in this country.