Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I completely agree with the noble Baroness. You can sit in front of an employer and tell them what your salary is, and then they think they can get away with paying you just a little bit more. That is not on. I share the noble Baroness’s concerns, and I will feed those back into the policy-making process.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I declare my interest as in the register, and I echo the birthday wishes to my noble friend. Following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I am delighted that Her Majesty’s Treasury will introduce measures to top up the pensions of those women who are receiving lower net pay each week due to the pension choice of their employer. The gender pensions gap is an urgent issue; it is twice the size or more of the pay gap. What measures are the Government taking to ensure employers help to close the gender pensions gap?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My noble friend has been a long-term campaigner on the gender pensions gap and the net pay issue, and I am glad that we have some good news on the horizon. It was a Conservative Government who introduced mandatory gender pay gap reporting, in 2017, which means that all large employers—those of more than 10,000 employees—have to calculate it publicly. This has placed the gender pay gap at the top of the agenda and prompted conversations with business. Employers are now focused on understanding and tackling the causes of the gaps in their own organisations.