Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Churchill and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

10. What assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the responses received to the Government Equalities Office’s recent consultation on closing the gender pay gap.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Nicky Morgan)]

As I have said, the Government are absolutely committed to eliminating the gender pay gap for good. Our consultation closed on 6 September. We received nearly 700 responses, including from 200 employers and business organisations, including the CBI. The responses from employers have been extremely positive, recognising that we all have a stake in the issue. We will consider the responses and bring forward new regulations shortly.

[Jo Churchill]

As my right hon. Friend knows, this subject is of great importance to me, but it leads to a broader question: what are the Government doing to ensure that the pipeline to senior management and director level for women is encouraged, because we still have a 32% earnings differential between women and men in large organisations, which is considerably larger than the 19% alluded to earlier?

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend might be interested to know that the gender pay gap in her constituency is 18.2%, which is just below the national average. I agree that this is an important issue. We have more women on FTSE 100 boards than ever before. In fact, we now have no all-male boards in the FTSE 100. Women now make up more than 25% of those boards. However, there is much more to do. She is absolutely right to talk about the executive pipeline. We have to get more women into management and executive positions, and we are currently looking at that issue.