Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that progress in closing the gender pay gap is not adversely affected by the covid-19 outbreak.

While evidence of the economic impact of the pandemic is still emerging, we know between April 2019 and April 2020, women’s median weekly pay increased by 2.5%, whereas men’s median weekly pay fell by 0.7%. The UK's gender pay gap has fallen to a record low of 15.5% from 17.4%, while the gender employment rate gap is at its lowest level on record at 6.6 percentage points.

The Government is committed to levelling up and making the UK a country where equality of opportunity exists for everyone. Coronavirus is the biggest challenge the UK has faced in decades and the government has taken unprecedented steps to protect and support jobs.

The Government has protected 4.5 million jobs held by women through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. The government also introduced one of the most generous self-employed coronavirus support schemes in the world. Around 760,000 claims have been received from self-employed women for the first Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) grant and figures so far show 660,000 claims have been received by women for the second grant.

Some sector-specific support has helped to support women’s employment by helping some of the hardest hit sectors in which women are overrepresented. For example, the government extended the temporary reduced rate of VAT (5%) to goods and services supplied by the tourism and hospitality sectors from 12 January to 31 March 2021. These are sectors that disproportionately employ women.