Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Debate between Maria Miller and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that, 45 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, women still earn on average 81 pence for every pound earned by men; welcomes the fact that pay transparency under section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 will be introduced in 2016; and calls on the Government to ensure that this results in real progress to close the gender pay gap by mandating the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to conduct, in consultation with the Low Pay Commission, an annual equal pay check to analyse information provided under section 78 on pay gaps across every sector of the economy and to make recommendations to close the gender pay gap.

The motion stands in the name of my hon. and right hon. Friends. May I take this opportunity to welcome the new Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice? I hope she will put her heart and soul into it and I wish her well in the role.

It gives me great pleasure to have called the debate today on the subject of equal pay. If we boil it down, we see that the cause of equal pay is a matter of simple workplace injustice. It is about people’s basic right to be paid fairly for the work they do, to have the opportunity to move up, and to be able to improve life for themselves and their families, regardless of whether they are a working man or a working woman.

Equal pay is a fight that colours the history of the Labour party and movement, from women tram and bus conductors who went on strike in 1918, to the women machinists in the Ford Dagenham plant. The House first pressed for equal pay in 1944, in relation to equal pay for men and women teachers. The Conservative Member for Islington East, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, inserted a clause in the Education Bill but it was not to be. Churchill was so incensed that he pressured her to withdraw her amendment, telling her, “Now, Thelma. We’ll have no more of that equal pay business.”

Thelma withdrew her proposal, but Churchill agreed to set up a royal commission on equal pay. Four years later, that commission warned that paying women the same as men

“may prove disastrous in the long run even to young and strong women by heavily overtaxing their nervous and muscular energy”.

Thankfully, times changed, and in 1970 Labour’s Barbara Castle ignored those apocalyptic predictions and passed the Equal Pay Act 1970. Until that time, it was commonplace for jobs to be advertised with one rate of pay for a man, and another for a woman. The Equal Pay Act outlawed discrimination in pay and is still used today by women to challenge such discrimination, but it is not enough. Forty-five years on, women still earn on average 81p for every £1 a man earns.

Throughout our history, my party has fought for equality. We fought for the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which outlawed maternity and sex discrimination; child benefit; the national minimum wage; a year’s maternity leave and the doubling of maternity pay; 15 hours’ free childcare; and the right to flexible working and paid paternity leave. I am proud that my party cut the pay gap by a third during our time in government, but we did not eradicate it.

I am sure the Secretary of State will say in her speech that the gender pay gap is the lowest on record, but I hope she will also concede that, in the past five years, the pace at which the pay gap is closing has slowed. That is why pay transparency is important. When companies publish data on pay, they are often surprised by how few women are in senior positions or earn the same as their male colleagues, and they usually act to change it.

Last summer, we launched a campaign for pay transparency, which called for a small but important action: that the Government implement section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 and mandate big companies to publish their gender pay gap. It is fair to say the Government put up some resistance, despite an excellent private Member’s Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). There was a rally outside Parliament led by a truly unusual and exotic coalition—I am not talking about the Prime Minister and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). Ex-Bond girl Gemma Arterton joined the wonderful Dagenham machinist women, Unite the union members and Grazia magazine readers to call for pay transparency. The Government changed their stance, and I thank them for having the courage to change their mind, because, after all, pay transparency is a pretty humble measure: the simple act of companies that employ more than 250 workers publishing their pay gap. That simple step can help us to take huge strides towards closing the gender pay gap once and for all.

For that to happen, however, the information provided by around 7,000 businesses must lead to change. Transparency is effective only when firms act on the information revealed.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech and some very important points, but she has not touched on a critical factor: for full-time workers, the gender pay gap for women under 40 has all but disappeared.

[Gloria De Piero]

I will come to the way in which full-time and part-time gender pay gaps are measured. I believe there is a flaw in the measurement. An hour at work is an hour at work, no matter whether someone is part-time or full-time. I for one find it peculiar that the Office for National Statistics makes that distinction. Is it because most women are in part-time work? I fear that that is exactly why.

Friends Life, the big insurance company, was one of the first big companies to publish its pay gap. It said that

“what gets measured, gets managed”

and that

“what gets publicly reported, gets managed better”.

In other words, transparency can lead to real and lasting change. We believe it is time to take that principle and apply it to the whole country.

The purpose of the motion is to propose that the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission should be tasked with analysing the information and producing a report to the Government and Parliament each year. It will monitor progress and make recommendations for action. It will act as an equal pay watchdog. An annual equal pay check would be a tool used to measure progress towards the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap in this generation.

By analysing the information, the EHRC could compare progress in different sectors, highlight areas where the gap is unusually high or widening, and identify companies, professions or industries where the gender pay gap is a thing of the past. We recommend that the EHRC draws on the expertise of the statisticians at the Low Pay Commission, because the disproportionate number of women in low-paid jobs is a major factor in the pay gap. Crucially, the EHRC should make recommendations for action, based on its analysis. It could do that by highlighting the best practice it finds in industries and individual companies, because there is not just one reason for the gender pay gap.

Discrimination still happens. I have spoken to women who are senior executives in investment banks and women working as council care assistants who have suffered because of it. Their stories are real and human.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Gloria De Piero

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right that, rather than introducing yet more legislation, the Government have been ensuring that we modernise the workplace and that in doing so we modernise the culture around flexible working in particular. It is a shame that the Labour party in government was unable to put in place flexible working. We have set great store by flexible working for all, and ensuring that everybody, regardless of their care responsibilities, has that option available to them.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Under Labour the gender pay gap fell. This morning’s official figures show that it is now on the increase. What are the Government going to do about it?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady will know that under this Government more women are in work than ever before, that the figures show that salaries are rising, and that we are tackling the long-term issue of the gender pay gap by changing the culture in business. Her party failed to do that by not ensuring that flexible working was available for all. We are making sure that a workplace that was designed by men for men is now designed to accommodate women too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Gloria De Piero

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating mumpreneurs and applauding their work. I know that she is a small business woman and knows a great deal about the sector. The figures speak for themselves: in the last quarter we saw a further 27,000 women taking up entrepreneurial roles in our economy, making 1.2 million in total. That is real progress indeed.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

There is no board in this country more high-profile than the Cabinet, so what message is being sent to business when only four out of 23 of its members are women?

[Maria Miller]

I take this opportunity to welcome the hon. Lady to her first questions on the Front Bench. I am sure that she will make a good contribution to all our Question Times. She is right that the Government have a huge role to play in setting an example. In my Department we have a significant majority of women in leadership roles. We want to ensure that in future we have even more women not only in Parliament and as Ministers, but in the Cabinet—something on which the Prime Minister has made his thoughts very clear.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Gloria De Piero

Thursday 18th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The Business Secretary and I helped to launch the most recent update on Lord Davies’s report. Both of us noted how much progress had been made. However, the hon. Lady is right to say that there is still much more to be done, whether in FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 firms. However, the House should note that considerable progress has been made under the Government—progress that was not forthcoming before.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The message that we send from this place is important. Some 32 Ministers are entitled to attend Cabinet meetings, but just five are women. Will the Secretary of State join me in urging the Prime Minister to put the situation right?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady will know that the Government are absolutely committed to the importance of equality and fairness and of getting more women involved, not just at the top of our organisations but throughout them. What we and other parties are doing is making sure that we develop that pipeline of great women to take those positions in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Gloria De Piero

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine has been taken off disability living allowance and was told in May that his appeal was ready to be heard at a tribunal but that the backlog meant that it could not be heard until April next year. That is an 11-month wait; does the Minister think that is an acceptable length of time?

[Maria Miller]

I am very happy to discuss an individual case such as that with the hon. Lady if she would like to talk to me at another point.