Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In response to the noble Baroness’s first question, as she understands very well, a number of factors influence how quickly the gender pay gap will decline. Obviously, there is so much research now on the value of a diverse workforce and how that improves profitability and competitiveness; we hope it will accelerate. In relation to ethnicity pay gap reporting, the noble Baroness will be aware that this gap is 2.3%, much smaller than the gender pay gap. We are working on promoting our guidance on how to address this through employer groups. In relation to disability reporting, following the successful court action we are reviewing our responses to the consultation.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the value of any employee should be based on the contribution that they will make to the organisation, not what they were earning before? Research by the charity Fawcett found that 61% of job applicants asked about previous salary history said that it damaged their confidence to negotiate a better salary. Does she not agree that this requirement bakes in gender, race and disability inequality and prevents people on lower salaries ever making the salary strides they need?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Those were some of the questions we explored in our pay transparency pilot, which looked at the impact of requiring employers to put salary information into their job recruitment advertisements and not asking about previous salaries. We plan to publish the methodology for that so that employers can adopt it. We will also do more work to look at the challenges of implementation.