Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to encourage universities to tackle their BME and intersecting gender pay gaps.

​​As independent and autonomous institutions, higher education institutions are responsible for decisions about who they employ and the pay offered to their staff.

All employers with over 250 employees are now required to report their gender pay gap data. The transparency created through reporting is crucial to accelerating progress to close the gender pay gap.

Through her Race Disparity Audit, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister has asked employers to commit to tackling barriers facing ethnic minorities in the workplace and has launched a consultation on ethnicity pay reporting, which is open until January.

​In the New Year, government will be announcing a package of measures to address disparities that affect both ethnic minority staff and students in higher education.