Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

Yes, women need to have the right to know, but this is a very difficult thing for the Government to deal with because people also have the right not to have their pay in the public domain. The Government are looking at this and further proposals will come forward, including in the employment Bill, which will be introduced in due course.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, if we can stick for a moment with the gender pay gap, the Minister has said that she is concerned about the gap—concerned that things are not moving on—but does anybody in this House think that it is going to close by osmosis? We need action: we need the Government to determine what they are going to do. There are a whole range of things that they could do, and I will give just two examples. First, they should encourage employers to provide women-only training programmes so that women can be lifted up on pay scales et cetera. Secondly, they should work with employers to identify ways of producing much better-quality part-time employment. Are any of those ideas ones that the Minister would want to push forward and encourage the Government to support?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right: we need to move forward on this, but it is about cultural changes within large organisations. We saw today the issues in the finance sector in particular. However, the Government are already doing things: they publish advice to all employers, and they have webinars, face-to-face events, trade shows and so on. They are working closely with the Women’s Business Council on particular sectors that are slow in moving forward, including the retail and finance sectors. The Department of Health and Social Care is undertaking a complete review of the gender pay gap in medicine, led by Dame Jane Dacre. We are doing a lot to help but this a slow process. It is still moving in the right direction, and we want to ensure that it continues to do so.