Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Jo Swinson

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

3. What steps she is taking to deliver equal pay for men and women.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The gender pay gap has fallen to its lowest level ever and has been entirely eliminated among full-time workers under the age of 40, but our goal must be to eliminate it entirely. We are tackling systemic pay inequalities through a range of measures: the Your Life initiative to get more girls into science, technology, engineering and maths; improved child care; extending flexible working; and introducing shared parental leave.

[Mr Hanson]

Forty four years after Labour’s Equal Pay Act 1970, sadly women earn on average 81p for every £1 that men earn. Tomorrow, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has a Bill providing for transparency in larger companies. Will the Government support it?

[Jo Swinson]

The Government’s position is not to support that particular Bill, but we are encouraging much more transparency through the Think, Act, Report initiative, to which more than 270 employers, covering 2.5 million employees, have signed up. Nearly half of them have done an equal pay audit in the last year and two thirds are publishing more information on gender equality. I agree that this is a hugely important issue on which we need to make more progress, and we are committed to doing so.