Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

It is certainly something always to be considered. I go back to the point I made earlier. We would much rather not have discrimination and problems with pay in the first place, and ensure that everyone is paid the right amount for doing the work. The regulations requiring employment tribunals to order an equal pay audit, which is what happens when an employer is found to be in breach of equal pay law, came into force on 1 October last year. We are not aware yet of any cases where an audit has been ordered, but that is another way in which employers’ minds might be concentrated, if they are found guilty of breaching the equal pay laws.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the review of charges in tribunals. What is of greater importance—saving £71 million, or justice for women?

[Nicky Morgan]

I know that the hon. Lady is new to the House and that she will not have seen all the debates in the previous Parliament when we talked about the impact of her party—the economic legacy left to us and the justice—[Interruption.] The issue, honestly, is that the best way to have justice for women and children, given the earlier statement by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is to have an economy that works for all, where there are jobs for all, paying good wages, and where we help all children to reach their aspirations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

First, I must congratulate those who made maiden speeches today: the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) and the hon. Members for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) and for Stirling (Steven Paterson). Their speeches were all passionate, personal and interesting.

Let me follow up on the point my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) made about local government pay. It is not just about the job evaluations; the requirement to undertake equality impact assessments has been removed. As a Unison member, I know it has long been an issue that local government has tended to shy away from, and the Government have now given councils licence to wriggle out of that requirement. That is disappointing, as are the empty Government Benches as we draw this important debate to a close.

Major progress was made on closing the gap between men’s and women’s pay under the last Labour Government. We have heard Government Members talk about the fact that the gender pay gap is at its lowest level ever, but the progress in tackling it over the past five years has slowed inordinately under this Government and the former coalition Government. That is incredibly disappointing. The progress has slowed, along with pay, across the board.

Looking to other countries, we know that much more can be done. This should not be up for debate, and I concur with the many colleagues who have shared that sentiment. We should not be here today, in 2015, having this debate about whether anything more should be done, because the answer is clear: yes, of course it should. The Equal Pay Act was passed 10 years before I was born, yet we are still here today arguing for parity between the sexes. That Act put into law the basic principle that we should all receive the same treatment on pay and employment conditions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) mentioned, it allows women to take their employer to a tribunal if a man doing similar work to her is being paid more, although now that is only possible if you can afford it, thanks to the barriers to accessing justice that the coalition saw fit to introduce. I remind everyone of the statistics: the number of equal pay claims has fallen by 68% but the number of claims going to tribunal has fallen by 79%, as my hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury—[Interruption.] I have entirely forgotten the name of her constituency, I am so sorry. [Interruption.] Yes, it was one of the London ones.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Melanie Onn]

Absolutely, while I try to remember the name of the constituency.

[Barbara Keeley]

I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the point that was made in our debate on sport and the Olympic legacy last week: the gross inequality between men and women in relation to payment and sponsorship in sport. That is one of the worst areas. America has the wonderful Title IX legislation, which ensures equal funding if and when it comes from the public purse, which is another thing to bear in mind. Not only is this so unequal, but, worse still, it is unequal to people such as our football team that will play in Canada tonight.

[Melanie Onn]

I could not agree more. Low pay concerns me, particularly as it is in all areas. If those who are public facing, with whom people interact more, can demonstrate the necessity of closing the gender pay gap, it will become a more prioritised issue among the general public.

I can now confirm that I was referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). I thank my colleagues for reminding me. It is quite embarrassing to have such a public brain fade.

[Jess Phillips]

You are only a woman!

[Melanie Onn]

Yes, how can I be expected to remember such complicated information?

I was just reflecting on accessing justice, and the difficulties faced by people from across the board. This is about not just women finding it difficult to access justice through the employment tribunal system, but those who are suffering from any kind of discrimination, particularly that relating to their pay. The Equal Pay Act was a milestone in the fight for equal pay, but, clearly, the Act in itself is not sufficient to close that gap altogether, especially in today’s world of casual employment, of people working multiple jobs and of increasing levels of self-employment. I am incredibly proud that the previous Labour Government made equal pay a priority and closed the pay gap by one third during their time in office. I say again that, over the past five years, we have seen almost no progress on this issue. In their manifesto, the Conservatives made no mention of putting in place any measures to try to tackle the pay gap, even though they have accepted that it exists. Today is about Labour challenging the Government on this important issue and trying to get them to change their mind.

We have heard quite a lot today with regard to how much women earn. In my constituency of Grimsby, women earn just 77p for every £1 brought home by men. I heard today that the figure in Coventry is as low as 60p. That is a significant difference. If we do not think that that affects the home lives of the children in our country, we are deluding ourselves.

Why is this such a significant problem in my constituency compared with some other areas in the country? As I noted earlier, there has been a surge of low pay and insecure work in this country over the past few years, and that has particularly been the case in my constituency. I know, from speaking to my constituents, that it tends to be women who have to work two or three different jobs, often on casual or zero-hours contracts, because they receive such low pay. Since 2010, one in three women’s jobs has come from women registering as self-employed. That is a problem that, again, the Equal Pay Act cannot address. On average, self-employed women earn less than half the money earned by self-employed men. Women are far more likely to be in jobs that pay less than the living wage. We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) talking at length and most passionately about the fact that the labour undertaken by women is given such scant value by our society.

[Chris Stephens]

The hon. Lady has made a number of excellent points, but another factor in decreasing wages has been the substantial reduction in collective bargaining in the UK since 1979. In Scotland, for example, 81% of workers’ pay was decided by collective bargaining in 1979, whereas that figure is now 23%.

[Melanie Onn]

I agree absolutely. We have seen the demise of collective bargaining in many different areas and employers are now moving further away from those agreements.

Previously, for example, the Labour Government had agreed a national arrangement for teaching assistants, but the coalition decided not to continue with the national pay negotiating body. Teaching assistants are, obviously, largely women, largely part time and largely low paid, and on term-time-only contracts. I know from my constituency and from people I have represented as an official of Unison that some earn as little as £5,000 or £7,000 a year, working in our schools and supporting our children when they most need additional support. That problem is being exacerbated by the move away from collective bargaining and those people are more prone to being exploited and having their wages squeezed.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points in a strong speech. She has mentioned the living wage and many local authorities are trying to elevate the circumstances for low-paid workers, particularly the women workers about whom we have heard, by becoming living wage councils. Surely that is a step forward that all councils should look to take.

[Melanie Onn]

I shall come to that point shortly.

If I can just make some progress—I have been dying to say that—to tackle unequal pay, it is imperative that we tackle the low-skill, low-wage economy that is particularly detrimental to women. Much of the success of the previous Labour Government was down to the introduction of the minimum wage. With 27% of women earning less than the living wage, the Government must do more to raise wages. If they will not do that by raising the minimum wage, they must commit actively to support SME businesses to pay the living wage and legislate for FTSE 100 companies to do the same. The forthcoming cuts to tax credits will only make the problem of low pay worse. If the Government want tax credits to be replaced by higher wages, they need to be active in making that happen and should not simply cut, and cross their fingers.

I completely concur with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) about living wage councils. I have been active in securing living wage agreements in four different local authorities. That needs to be championed across the board and we must ensure that when those councils make arrangements for any contractors to undertake services on their behalf those companies should also be living wage employers.

The Government need to accept that many zero-hours contracts are exploitative and that people cannot properly manage their household budget if they do not know what they will be earning from one week to the next. The change to exclusivity clauses is welcome, but it ignores the wider problem. Something needs to be done to make the lives of people in insecure work more manageable. I will always believe that when a job exists, a proper contract of employment should be provided. The Conservative Government claim to be on the side of working people, yet when they are presented with an opportunity such as this genuinely to improve people’s working lives, they squirm about like a worm at the end of a line.

It is simply not good enough. People need change and they need it now. Take the Government’s commitment to 30 hours of free childcare for working parents. First, I am pleased to see that they have adopted another of the previous Labour Government’s pledges to support working families. In the race to win votes ahead of the general election, they made a commitment they cannot afford. It is massively underfunded. It costs on average £4.53 an hour to provide the care, but the Government are offering only £3.88 an hour. Perhaps the Minister can tell us where the rest of the money is coming from. If it comes at the expense of child tax credit or working families tax credit, the Government are merely giving with one hand but taking away with the other.

I want to finish by saying that I recently met representatives of a local charity in my constituency called Care, which provides emergency food aid in Grimsby, and they told me that the number of meals that they provide to children has increased by 27% this year alone. Unfair wages for women is a problem of basic fairness, but the fact that working women are being pushed into poverty and insecurity to the extent that they can no longer afford to feed their children is a crisis that surely demands urgent action.