Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to ensure gender equality in civil service salaries.

The median gender pay gap for full-time civil servants has narrowed since 2010 but we must continue to press to narrow the gap further, including by reminding departments of their clear legal obligations on equal pay and conducting equal pay audits. Salaries for new appointments must be justified on the basis of the skills and experience necessary to do the job. For staff below the Senior Civil Service (SCS), this is for individual departments to manage. For the centrally-managed SCS, pay proposals have regard to the impact on women.

More widely, the Government is concerned that a long-standing majority of women in the overall civil service, does not translate into a similar proportion in the SCS. I have commissioned work to address this issue.