Oral Answers to Questions

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

This Government are investing £74 million in the first year alone of our autism strategy to promote a straightforward route to diagnosis and the correct support, and we will shortly be detailing our implementation plan for year two. The Department has been funding the Autism Education Trust since 2011.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

9. If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

In “Inclusive Britain”, our response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, we accepted the recommendation to publish guidance for employers to support a voluntary approach to ethnicity pay reporting. Work on this is already under way.

[Janet Daby]

According to the Resolution Foundation, in 2018 the ethnicity pay gap cost black workers over £3.2 billion in the loss of wages. Following the pandemic, the gap is getting wider. As the Minister will know, the Women and Equalities Committee said in February that businesses

“are ready for Ministers to follow through”

on the Government’s manifesto commitment to bring in ethnicity pay gap reporting. Can the Minister therefore explain what the hold-up is, and when the Government will do that?

[Paul Scully]

We remain committed to supporting businesses with pay reporting. There are significant technical challenges to it, and it may not be the most effective intervention for some employers in some areas, but we are working on guidance to make sure it can be as effective as possible.