Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes. I also add my congratulations to my noble friend the Minister and today’s four maidens. May they thrive in their new place of work—if not technically employment.

As my noble friend Lady Prosser so ably reminded us, this December will mark 50 years since the implementation of the Equal Pay Act 1970. However, the gender pay gap for all employees was still 13% last year and highest in our much-celebrated and lucrative financial sector. I suggest—at grave risk of being hit by a thunderbolt—that that Act contained a fatal design flaw that has been replicated in its successor statute, the Equality Act. It is left to an individual woman worker, with or without the aid of her union—though in recent years some unions have done valiant work on this—to, first, find out what her male colleagues are being paid for the same work or work of equivalent value and, secondly, in the event of disparity, to sue her employer.

With respect, for most women that scenario is cloud-cuckoo-land. I hope that noble Lords who have heard me raise this during previous Women’s History Months will forgive the repetition but, as legislators, would we dream of providing such a paltry enforcement mechanism in any other vital area of regulation? Would we leave children to investigate and litigate school standards, consumers to individually police food standards, and citizens to do the same for environmental protection, or building or nuclear safety, with no relevant state enforcement agency, even as a backstop? Surely the time has come to right this historic and continuing wrong. Even the most zealous free marketeers cannot seriously advocate impunity for employers who routinely and exploitatively discriminate against women or other groups in the context of remuneration for work.

HMRC already has access to payroll information for tax purposes, so it cannot be beyond the wit of policymakers to extend that remit and purpose to random spot-checking for equal pay as well. Indeed, this is one area where AI tools could come to the aid of employees rather than being a threat to them. Discrepancies could then trigger closer investigation, warning notices and eventual penalties in the event of persistent non-compliance and illegality.

I know that many have focused their equal pay efforts on pay transparency duties for larger employers, but this seems to simultaneously lack both realism and ambition. Again, would we allow food or drugs manufacturers, whatever their size, to market products unfit for consumption as long as they were labelled?

I ask my noble friend the Minister what plans His Majesty’s Government have in this area. For example, might Schedule 7 to the Bill be amended, or regulations under the new Section 78A of the Equality Act be made, to add equal pay provisions for state enforcement, or are there plans for a separate statute in this Parliament? Will she meet me and some of the unions and lawyers who have been working on the problem? Is it finally time for a dream made in Dagenham in 1968 to be fulfilled in Westminster?

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment ably and comprehensively moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, which would, as he explained, insert a new clause. It is an eminently sensible amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, described the arguments put by this side in the previous debate as straw man arguments. He was like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, because his claim that they were straw man arguments was comprehensively eviscerated by my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. They were substantive arguments and substantive concerns, notwithstanding the noble Lord’s comments and those of noble Lords on the Government’s side.

Clause 20 could be described as a hologram or a chimaera because it does not provide very much in the way of detail about the practical ramifications and impacts of this clause on businesses, particularly smaller businesses. The amendment is very sensible. In section 10 of the cost-benefit analysis in the Employment Rights Bill: Economic Analysis that the Government published last October, one is hard pressed to see any detailed empirical evidence from reputable economists or other academics which would sustain the likely costings that the Government have prayed in aid in favour of this part of the Bill. We are told that the universal cost of the Bill to business will be a very speculative £5 billion, but the source of that figure is not very clear; in fact, it is quite opaque. I do not believe that figure. For a number of reasons, the data is suspect, which is why we need the proper impact assessment so persuasively argued for by my noble friend on the Front Bench. We have not had a proper analysis of the detail in a risk assessment of section 10 of the cost-benefit analysis.

We also have not had a proper consultation process on the Bill. We have not had the opportunity to look at the likely impacts that flow from this clause. I say at the outset that, like my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, I am a proud member of the Free Speech Union, which has made a similar case about consultation.

We also do not know anything about the opportunity cost. Not everyone is an economist, but opportunity cost is what may have happened if this Bill had not come along. I suspect that employers, including smaller employers, would have taken on more staff, had there not been the encumbrances in this clause. In other words, they will be risk averse: they will not wish to run the risk of taking people on, given the litigation and vexatious claims which may well arise from this clause.

The figure the Government have put forward for the number of employment tribunals does not stand up to scrutiny, given the pressure that this will put on the tribunals themselves, as well as the other courts that will be responsible for adjudicating on this litigation. Indeed, as my noble friend said, this will exacerbate the already very significant problem of backlogs in the employment tribunals.

I turn to the kernel of this amendment. If I take the Minister and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, who supported her from the government Benches, at their word, I do not know why they would not wish to support the free speech caveat in this amendment. Although they have not properly identified what harassment is—they have not defined it—they are going after people who are committing acts of harassment. They are not seeking to stifle or curtail free speech.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I would suggest that the so-called “free speech caveat” is Section 6 of the Human Rights Act, which requires all public authorities, including courts and tribunals, to interpret all other legislation in a way that is compatible with convention rights, including—for the purposes of the present debate, as I understand the noble Lord’s concerns—Article 10 of the convention on human rights.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I defer to the noble Baroness’s expertise on human rights legislation, but we are considering this specific, bespoke legislation. There will not necessarily be a read-across between that and—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

There will.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Well, the noble Baroness will not be present at every employment tribunal and hear and adjudicate every case. As my noble friend Lord Young of Acton has said, there is a significant threat of inadvertent issues arising from this legislation, which, as my noble friend Lady Cash has said, is very poorly drafted. As subsection 2(a) of the proposed new clause sets out, it is important to look through the prism of free speech at Clauses 19 to 22.

It is also important to look at the likely costs to employers. This is the central point of my remarks: we do not know what those costs will be. It is certainly appropriate that Ministers be required to tell Parliament what the ramifications are in terms of cost. This is a Government who are committed to growth and to supporting businesses in all their endeavours. Therefore, it would be sensible to consider a review of how these issues impact on businesses.

On proposals for mitigations, there have been no ideas, no protocols, no concordats, and no policies put in place to give any guidance to smaller businesses—I am not necessarily referring to the smallest micro-businesses—to cope with the problems deliberately arising because this Labour Government have chosen to put these encumbrances and burdens on businesses. They are not giving any support to businesses to help cope with this. The costs will fall on the shareholders, on the businesses, and ultimately on the workforce—and it will cost jobs. For that reason, I support the amendment. It does not detract from the important commitment to protect ordinary working people, who deserve to be able to go to work without being bullied, harassed or treated unfairly or egregiously. We all agree with that, on which there is a consensus. It would not detract from that to make an amendment that would provide extra protections against people who are vexatious or malicious, or who cause difficulties in the long run, for no apparent reason. It is a sensible amendment that would protect business and would also protect the workforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I, too, have my name on Amendment 97, which would introduce yet another impact assessment. I know that so many impact assessments have been proposed in relation to the Bill that it has become a bit of a cliché, but I am especially concerned that this one is taken seriously because the third-party harassment sections of the Bill are ill thought out in a way that could lead to unintended consequences.

One noble Lord a few moments ago asked why there was a desire for an impact assessment rather than thinking of the potential positives of the Bill. The response of the Government in relation to concerns about Clause 20, for example, which is to say that there is nothing to see here—no problem at all—is an insufficient way of responding to some quite detailed scrutiny that has been put forward. If there is any exaggeration of the potential problems, an impact assessment should be able to resolve that for us.

I will focus largely on Clause 20, looking first at its potential cost to employers. That is especially important given that the Minister’s counter to my remarks earlier was that Clause 20 will be good for business. The Government’s own assessment advises that the total economic impact of complying with Clause 20 will be under £10 million and will have negligible economic impact on businesses. That is irresponsible; some might go so far as to call it misinformation. For example, that assessment says that the cost of familiarisation with the Bill and its ramifications will be £30 per medium business and only £19 per small microbusiness. I am not sure where these woeful underestimates come from or what they are based on, but if noble Lords have never met an employment lawyer, I can assure them that that is an unlikely figure.

We need a serious cost-benefit analysis. Let us consider what this section of the Bill requires businesses to do. Employers must show that they have taken all reasonable steps; that sets a high threshold for preventive action, as we heard earlier. Let us think what that means. There are direct costs for the initial implementation of anti-harassment policies, including familiarisation with the new regulations and checking exactly what their legal liabilities will mean. As we have seen during this debate, it is not necessarily as clear as day what the Bill requires.

As we have been arguing, if you are a small microbusiness trying to concentrate on being a business and trying to grow bigger, having to study the Bill and work out what your liability will be could be quite time consuming, nerve-wracking and so on. They will have to seek out third-party and legal advice—no doubt, there will be lots of consultants queuing up—because, as responsible businesses, they will want to safeguard themselves from the financial risks of not complying. One of the main risks they will be trying to ensure they do not have to deal with is the possibility of employment tribunals.

In what seems like an entirely arbitrary figure, the Government predict that only 30 employment tribunals a year will come from these clauses. There is no explanation as to how the Government reached that figure, and it is certainly completely at odds with industry experts who expect that Clause 20 alone will see an increase in employment tribunals of 15%—in other words, an additional 14,750 cases a year. As we heard earlier in a different context, already in 2023-24, employment tribunal courts received 97,000 cases, up from 86,000 the year before. That is an increase of nearly 13%. More and more people are forced into employment tribunals for a variety of reasons.

This Bill threatens to create even more cases—an unknown figure because it is a new provision. The Government are saying that it will be only 30 a year, but that is just making it up. There is, at least, an attempt in this amendment to try to work it out. According to the chambers of commerce, the cost of one employment tribunal is, on average, about £8,500, and if a claimant is successful, there is no financial limit to the compensation in a harassment case. Imagine you are a business worried about what is going to happen: this clause will lead to risk-averse and overcautious behaviour, not detailed in the Bill, to try to avoid being held liable. Some of us fear that this is what this kind of over-regulatory, precautionary approach will lead to.

Businesses will not be able to be slipshod about their potential liability. Smaller SMEs and microbusinesses —often with no dedicated HR or EDI offices—will need to think about employing new staff dedicated to protecting them from claims and giving them advice. The idea of a whole new generation of HR and EDI staff roles in every business in the country is frightening enough, but, anyway, it has nothing to do with their core businesses. Let us also note that the average salary of an EDI officer in the UK is £42,084.

I want also to stress why an impact assessment must include which occupations might be at particular risk of third-party harassment claims through no fault of the employer and the impact, specifically, on free speech. These parts of the amendment are very important because we were asked earlier in a different group why there had been a focus on hospitality, sport and universities. There may be other sectors but, in a way, this is an assessment to see which sectors would be affected. It also asks for an impact assessment on free speech. As we have heard, the Government simply deny that there will be any impact in relation to free speech. I disagree, but let us scrutinise it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made the point that we should not worry about free speech because it is protected by the convention on human rights. She cited a number of clauses. It is true that, on paper, none of us should be worried about free speech; our free speech in this country is fully protected. And yet, daily—I stress, daily—there are more and more instances, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is not in her place, indicated earlier, in which free speech is under stress in this country. More and more people are walking on eggshells and are, in many instances, getting sacked or disciplined for speaking their minds in workplaces, so I am not convinced by “Nothing to see here, don’t worry about it, all is well”.

Earlier, the noble Baroness—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness; I will be brief. I want just to respond to her point, because she referred to what I said earlier. I am not trying to suggest that there are not challenges and there is not, on occasion, over-policing of people’s freedom of expression. Believe it or not, I probably read the same newspapers as the noble Baroness. I was trying, perhaps inadequately, to make the point to the noble Lord earlier that we have overarching legislation in the Human Rights Act which guarantees free speech and does so in a way that is legally and constitutionally stronger than any amendment noble Lords could pass to the current Employment Rights Bill. If that is not working, then we need to enforce it better. I am just suggesting that, as a matter of law, we have the protection for free speech; we just need to enforce it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Hear, hear! It was a very good speech.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

There we go. We have had the adjudication. It was a very good speech. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. She demonstrated the patience of a saint in earlier, more contentious groups, if I can put it like that. If there needs to be further evidence of her patience, I was very grateful for the significant time that she and her Bill team and other experts gave me to discuss this issue and a later issue in the Bill.

Numerical accidents aside, I have to commend the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on her impeccable opening to the debate. I think we can all agree that it was a fabulous tour de force around the issues.

In contrast to the Bill as a whole or previous groups, there is some serious room for non-partisan and cross-partisan consensus in this area. I really do believe that, for reasons that ought to be self-evident from what we have heard from Members of the Committee already.

We have heard from noble Lords—actually, it may be a total accident but I think it has been noble Baronesses so far—and we know that there is a place for a certain type of non-disclosure agreement to protect commercial confidences and client lists, et cetera. We are trying to be more balanced and more forensic than that in this group, and we know why. We want to protect those things, to have a decent employment relationship and to have commerce and so on, but not to have the abuses. I suggest that the abuses have to go broader than harassment; that is why Amendment 281 in my name is drafted in terms of illegal activity more broadly. I will say more on that in a moment.

I support the thrust, the intention and the aspiration of all the amendments in the group. At this stage I consider them all probing amendments. Realistically, I suspect that what the Committee, or everyone who has spoken so far, wants is a government amendment, informed by these discussions, that we can all get behind. That is the way to do it, obviously.

I will speak in favour of Amendment 281, or of the drafting approach that I have taken, having listened to other Members of the Committee and tried to take on board their Second Reading speeches and their considerable work, over many years in some cases. I commend Amendment 281 because it aspires to some simplicity, some versatility, some breadth and the avoidance of unintended consequences.

For example, it is broader than harassment. The approach I have taken is based on my understanding of what the common-law position was anyway. Like everyone else in the Committee and beyond, I watched the scandals around Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo, et cetera. When they began to erupt—and, goodness me, do they not keep on coming?—my analysis, my view, was that these contractual agreements were all voidable in the public interest in any event. As a matter of common-law principle, they should all have been voidable in a court and therefore unenforceable in any event. The problem with relying on just my understanding of the common law is that it does not send a signal to the wicked employers—not all of them, but the ones who are wicked—nor give confidence to victims, whistleblowers and so on.

This is one of the areas where there is some value in putting some common-law principle clearly, succinctly and non-exhaustively on the face of a statute, to give confidence and clarity so that people know that abusive non-disclosure agreements—not the ones that we think are valuable, but abusive ones—which are being used to silence and cover up revelations of illegal activity, broadly, will not be enforceable in court, whether or not you have shelled out some money in the first place. That was what I attempted to do in the drafting approach that I chose with Amendment 281.

Members of the Committee who have come armed with the actual Marshalled List, which I know is a novel thing to do, will find Amendment 281 on page 114. The approach I have taken is to say that non-disclosure agreements are voidable. They are not automatically so, but they are voidable—that is, in those circumstances, unenforceable—if they prevent disclosure of conduct that may be contrary to law.

When a court is considering whether to void such an agreement—to make it unenforceable—there are certain factors that ought to be taken into account. The severity of the allegation of proven or admitted conduct, including the veracity of those allegations, would come up in an attempt by the former employer or current employer to enforce this agreement. The second factor is whether all parties to the contract were in receipt of independent legal advice. This means that an employer trying to construct one of these agreements and to get an employee to agree to it will have to realise that if that independent legal advice is not evidenced and not provided, later, the whole thing will be an expensive waste of time, because it is likely to be voided in the public interest by a court or tribunal. Therefore, they had better do what employers often do in standard consent agreements, which is pay for independent advice and have that witnessed.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

275: After Clause 140, insert the following new Clause—
“Secretary of State: equal pay enforcement function(1) Payroll and other company information required by HMRC for the purposes of taxation may be used by the Secretary of State for the purpose of monitoring compliance with the equal pay duty under the Equality Act 2010. (2) The Secretary of State may conduct more detailed investigations into equal pay compliance on the basis of such monitoring of payroll and other information and an employer must take all reasonable steps to cooperate.(3) In the event that the Secretary of State is of the view that a particular employer is in breach of its duties to provide equal pay for like, equivalent or work of equal value, they may—(a) issue a private notice to the employer, advising of that view and recommending rectifying measures in relation to past discriminatory pay or future pay practices and policy,(b) issue a public notice with the type of advice set out in paragraph (a) above, or(c) seek such relief as would be open to individual employees in the appropriate court or tribunal, on their behalf.(4) A court or tribunal finding in favour of such an application may, in addition to awarding appropriate compensation to victims of discriminatory pay practice, impose a civil penalty, not exceeding 10% of the employer’s annual turnover, as it finds appropriate in all the circumstances.(5) The Secretary of State may employ algorithmic technology including artificial intelligence software in the monitoring of equal pay compliance but must provide any court or tribunal in which relief is sought, with details of any relevant software and evidence of the effective functioning of the computer system employed in the monitoring and investigation of the employer in question.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe why equal pay laws have been left to individual employees to enforce by personal litigation, and how an element of state enforcement might assist such employees in achieving their rights to equal pay as provided for under the Employment Act 2010.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the principle that sits behind my probing amendment, like the principle of equal pay for equal or equivalent work, is uncontroversial and therefore that I need not detain the Committee for too long—I am a sort of guest of this Committee, when some noble Lords have been really putting the hard yards in for so long. Over the years, I have been incredibly grateful to discuss my concern about equal pay legislation with a number of Members in this Committee and noble Lords in general. I have been particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch and her officials, who have been very generous with their time and responded to me by agreeing to consider my proposal as part of their preparations for a more specific Bill—not too long in the future—that will cover these issues.

There has been a broad consensus in British politics for some years that there should not be discrimination in pay. We have had the Equal Pay Act since 1970 and successor legislation; I do not believe it has been controversial in party-political terms. That will be 75 years of equal pay legislation in December, and still nowhere near equal pay. My own view is that, right from the beginning, there was a fundamental design fault in the legislation—which was so brilliantly “Made in Dagenham”—because the enforcement mechanism was wanting.

I have said before there is no other area of regulation in this country that we take seriously that we would leave to an individual citizen or consumer to enforce for themselves. Imagine school standards, food standards, nuclear safety standards, health and safety standards, environmental standards and so on if the only enforcement mechanism in the legislation was for the individual citizen to investigate the regulatory breach and then, with or without the support of a trade union or an NGO, to sue for themselves. That has been the position for individual workers under equal pay legislation from the very start, and that is problematic.

My amendment creates the possibility of the state acting as a backstop to stand behind an individual worker, so that she does not have to go through those ridiculous hoops—which will take years of expensive investigation and legislation—to find out what her colleagues are getting paid, not just for the same job but for equivalent work, with all the complications around that, and then, with or without trade union support, sue her employer. Who wants to do that? It is just not a realistic regulatory enforcement mechanism.

In my probing amendment, I suggest that some agency of the state ought to sit behind as a backstop in that investigation and enforcement process. If that were the case, we could help to avoid unnecessary and expensive litigation and the bankruptcy of some local authorities. A state regulator could, for example, investigate a particular employer that had become a concern with a range of regulatory options, including private notices and private conversations, before public conversations and potential enforcement action. Entrenched inequality in pay practice could be nipped in the bud before years transpire and the debts accumulate. I think, having listened to some previous debates on this Bill, that this principle ought to be welcomed on all sides of the Chamber, because it could be good for the business as well as for workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on this amendment. It is quite an ingenious and intelligent amendment that is quite superficially attractive. I know the Minister will give it proper and due consideration.

My only problem is that it draws an analogy that does not really stand up to close scrutiny. I defer to the noble Baroness’ greater legal expertise, but when you are employed, there is a personal contract between the employee and the employer that you have freely entered into. It may be that, in the course of that contract, your pay falls behind and there are societal and economic reasons why you are paid different amounts of money. We could be here all week discussing that.

However, it is not the same as the relationship you have with a nuclear power station, where you have the expectation that you will be kept safe from accidents and drastic events; with your local water authority and the expectation that you will not be flooded; or when you go on an aeroplane that, God forbid, that aeroplane will not crash. You do not have that direct contractual relationship with those bodies. In other words, you essentially defer that responsibility legally to other bodies to intercede on your behalf. Therefore, this amendment, in a circuitous way, undermines the very concept of a one-on-one contractual relationship, so I do not think it is analogous.

Having said that, I would not particularly oppose this amendment. It is ingenious and interesting but, with all due respect, I do not think the noble Baroness draws an accurate analogy between the two.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for taking the argument so seriously. Of course, I disagree with him. When you go to eat in a restaurant, go to school or buy a can of baked beans, you may well have a private, contractual relationship with the supplier of that good or service. None the less, the state has decided that it needs to intervene because these power relationships are not all equal and there is a public good in the baked beans being safe to eat, the school delivering a good service, et cetera.

So, from the moment the UK Government and the UK people took the democratic decision that there should be laws to protect school standards, food safety, health and safety and non-discrimination in pay—supported by people from all parties, including in your Lordships’ House—it is not just a matter of private contract between two parties anymore; it is actually a matter of public policy and a wider rule of law point. The non-discrimination point has been non-partisan in this country for some years.

Most equality legislation has, perhaps, been promoted by Labour Governments, but the disability rights Act is the obvious exception. There has been a bipartisan consensus that we should not discriminate against people because of their sex, including in pay. We just have not been delivering on pay as well as we have been delivering in other areas of women’s lives. Therefore, the analogy with school standards, health and safety standards and food standards works. If we want to achieve equal pay, we have to take it seriously in enforcement.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Just to come back to the noble Baroness, would she therefore extend the provisions of her amendment to all protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010?

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Yes, I would.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, that was a most interesting exchange, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and my noble friend Lord Jackson for it. As I have said many times, I am not a lawyer, but as a broader observation, there seems to be a slight philosophical discussion developing this evening between intervention and initiation when it comes to various state interventions in certain areas of law.

I have no doubt at all that the intention behind the noble Baroness’s amendment is to strengthen the enforcement of equal pay laws. As she rightly says, we all support that objective, but we feel that this particular proposal is somewhat flawed, not least because we just do not think it will work. At its core, the amendment risks conflating pay disparity with unlawful discrimination. It assumes that if a pay gap exists, there must therefore be wrongdoing. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, acknowledged, it is not that simple, because pay disparities can and often do arise for entirely legitimate reasons, such as differences in experience or qualifications, performance geography or even negotiated terms, to my noble friend Lord Jackson’s point. To suggest that a mere statistical difference is indicative of discrimination is to abandon the nuanced legal framework carefully set out in the Equality Act 2010. While paying a great deal of respect to the arguments—and there is considerable merit in this—we cannot support this amendment.

[The Minister of State, Office for Equality and Opportunity (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I am also an occasional visitor to this Committee, but I am very pleased to be here this evening to address her Amendment 275. I thank her for recognising the engagement there has been with the Government and others on this up to this point.

Certainly, the Government want to make very clear that we share the broad aims behind this amendment. Over 50 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970 and 15 years after the Equality Act 2010, it is clear that equal pay has not yet been achieved. That is why the Government have committed to strengthen the equal pay regime and end pay discrimination. I share the concerns of my noble friend in identifying the challenge of enforcement in this case. There is more we can do to ensure that the onus does not fall only on women to find out whether they are receiving the same pay as their male colleagues for equal work and to take enforcement action against employers in the case of a breach.

It is possible to envisage, in relation to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, a system in which you have both the contractual arrangement and the ability to take individual action as is the case now and an enforcement body that supports people doing that in general terms and identifies thematic or consistent ways in which equal pay is being breached. That is why the Government are committed to establishing an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit with the involvement of trade unions. As part of this, we will carefully consider how we can improve the enforcement of the equal pay scheme.

On 7 April we launched a call for evidence on this issue and wider equality law to ensure that any steps we take will lead to a meaningful strengthening of protections against pay discrimination—an objective that I am sure my noble friend will share. It is important that the Government are able to develop these changes in partnership with business, trade unions and civil society to ensure that the law works for everybody. For that reason, I hope my noble friend will recognise that this will be a more appropriate process through which to address these issues. As she suggests, we will give these areas very close consideration in advance of the equality, race and disability Bill.

In relation to some of the specific points my noble friend raises about the way this might operate, we certainly recognise the benefits that can arise from government departments, including HMRC, working together. HMRC already has a number of joint working and data-sharing arrangements with departments and agencies. The Government are therefore not closed in principle to establishing new data-sharing arrangements with regulatory authorities where this can support their regulatory functions.

My noble friend made a very interesting point about the use of AI. It would not be sufficient simply to compare the pay of different people working within a workplace unless you could also have some analysis of how that applied to the nature of the work and whether that was work of equal value. It may well be that advances in technology, including AI, would be a way in which we could support that monitoring.

Policy is at a very formative stage. My officials will explore a wide range of options to improve the enforcement of equal pay rights. While taking great care to ensure that safeguards are put in place in relation to personal data, particularly where that relates to discrimination and protected characteristics, I suspect the sort of description that she gave of the contribution of AI is very much part of what, across government, we are wanting to see in terms of its use in future.

We are sympathetic to the ultimate objectives of my noble friend’s amendment. I hope she recognises that and the progress that we intend to make on that pledge to deliver stronger enforcement mechanisms and, in particular, an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit. With that assurance, I hope she feels able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My apologies to the Committee. It has of course been 75 years since the European Convention on Human Rights and 50 years since equal pay legislation—forgive that rather glaring howler. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in particular, and to my noble friend the Minister, whose officials have been very generous and thoughtful with their time. I look forward to watching their thinking develop on this forthcoming legislation. With that, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 275 withdrawn.