Gender Equality: Pay Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Dubs's debates with the Department for International Development
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, the Prime Minister has made clear that tackling injustices such as the gender pay gap is part of building a country that works for everyone. In 2017 the Government introduced ground-breaking regulations requiring large employers to publish the differences between what they pay their male and female staff in average salaries and bonuses. Greater transparency will help to identify barriers to achieving gender equality in the workplace so that employers can take action to address them.
I welcome the Minister’s reference to greater transparency. Is it not time to be bold on this issue? If we are really going to tackle such inequalities as the gender pay gap, should we not do what is done in some Scandinavian countries and put all income tax returns into the public domain?
My Lords, certainly Norway has done this. The unintended consequence of doing so was that it was seen as a snooper’s charter, a way for people to snoop into the information of people that they did not like. I think publishing the gender pay gap will give employees a greater sense of the company that they are going to work for and whether there is gender equality across pay, as opposed to a huge database that cannot have the granular detail that the gender pay gap reporting will have but can perhaps be used with other intent from how it was designed.