BBC Pay
Debate between Matt Hancock and Sarah Champion(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. Without that decision and without the support to bring down the threshold to £150,000, there would still be silence on this issue, and now there is not, which is good.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
This urgent question plus the gender pay gap figures released at the weekend show that gender assumptions across the UK are still pervasive—assumptions about what a woman is worth, what her potential is and what she can aspire to. What will the Minister do in his new role to tackle those assumptions?
Matt Hancock
Getting to the bottom of this problem in the BBC is not just important for the BBC itself and for all the brilliant women who work in the BBC and who are not paid as much as their male counterparts doing the same job. It is symbolic across the whole country and shows that we believe in the equality of opportunity and in people being paid fairly. Gender should not define how much an individual is paid.