Gender Pay Gaps 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
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, the EHRC has enforcement powers if people are misreporting or not reporting at all. Although the story so far has been very good, with almost 100% compliance, sanctions are within the EHRC’s powers.
My Lords, to what extent is the gender pay gap distorted by the number of people, often very senior, who are masquerading as self-employed when they are working for large organisations? They are missed out of the figures altogether. Is not the only answer that individual tax returns should be in the public domain, as they are in other countries? Then we could pin all this down once and for all.
The noble Lord has raised this before. There is not agreement across the House about such intrusion into people’s personal data. We often talk about data protection and privacy of data. He is right to point out that there are certain cohorts of people for whom pay data is not required because they are not employees—they might be partners and therefore not salaried—but the good thing about gender pay gap reporting is that it is done on a quartile basis, so that one can see at each level of the organisation where the disparities lie.