Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Christina Rees Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)]

I congratulate all Members who have made their maiden speeches today. I shall be taking up some of the themes that have featured in the debate so far.

I am proud to be the first female Member of Parliament for Neath. I have only one daughter, but she is the apple of my eye. I have no sisters, but I have a wonderful brother who is definitely in touch with his feminine side, although he does not have a man bag—not to my knowledge, at least.

Let me begin by taking up the sporting theme. Before I came here, I was proud to be the only female national coach for Squash Wales. I introduced many women and girls to sport, whether they wanted to engage in it merely for recreational purposes or to fulfil their potential and go on to represent Wales, as I did many times.

It is 45 years since a Labour Government passed the Equal Pay Act in response to the proactive campaign of the women in Dagenham, yet, on average, women still earn just 81p for every pound earned by men. Progress to close that gap has slowed dramatically, with the rate falling from 2.4% between 2006 and 2010 to 0.7% during the coalition Government’s period in office.

One of the first acts of the coalition Government was to abolish the Women’s National Commission, which was established in 1979 by Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle. It was an equality body advising and informing the Government on issues facing women, such as the lack of women in key jobs. A renewed focus on those issues is needed now more than ever.

In my constituency women earn 86p for every pound earned by a man. That is slightly above the UK average, but in Neath the median weekly income for all workers, including men, is just £460, which is £20 lower than the rest of Wales, and £60 less than the UK median. The gender gap is less pronounced when the issue of equal pay is analysed through the prism of older industrial areas and the economic disparities faced by all the people of Neath.

The public sector, which has been severely hit by the Government’s austerity programme, is critical to women’s employment in Wales. It accounts for 40% of women’s employment, compared with 20% of men’s, and nearly two thirds of public sector employees are women. Here, the gap has increased from 9.5% to 11%.

The impact of the recession on work in Neath is stark. Wage rates for women in Wales are depressed compared with other regions, with women full-time employees in Wales’s public sector the second lowest paid in the UK, and in the private sector the lowest paid of all. In the service, retail and operative sectors, more than one in 20 jobs have been lost in just two years after the recession, with the total number of semi-skilled and unskilled jobs still less than in 2005. The recovery in these jobs is only coming in the shape of insecure, poorly paid employment.

The Bevan Foundation examined the issue in its report “Women, work and the recession in Wales”. It suggests that women in occupations at the bottom of the labour market have borne the brunt of job losses, with administrative and secretarial roles and process and plant operatives seeing significant decreases in numbers. The report also suggests that women are very much more likely to be employed part time than men— 42% of women’s employment is part time, compared with just 12% of men’s employment in June 2012. Crucially, the average part-time hourly rate is a third less than it is for full-time work. Those registered as self-employed, which accounts for 30% of female jobs since 2010, similarly earn less—in fact, they earn less than half what self-employed men earn. Then there are the punitive zero-hour contracts, which should be abolished.

In Wales in 2009, only 55.7% of lone parents were in employment and 26.7% of all children were living in households of in-work poverty. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2014 there were 2 million lone parents with dependent children in the UK. Women accounted for 91% of lone parents with dependent children.

Women earning less in Wales, and in Neath, where the situation is exacerbated, has a direct effect on child poverty and children living in poor households. All that paints a grim picture for working women in our country. The broader effects on families and on children are clear. The United Nations predicts that at the current rate of progress it will take 70 years to achieve gender parity in Britain and to close the pay gap. It is of paramount importance that the annual equal pay check is implemented so that the information can be used to ensure that the gender pay gap is closed.