1 Introduction
1. The Women and Work Commission, set up in July
2004, had a very broad remit to examine all the causes of the
continuing gender pay gap in the UK (at that time, a gap in mean
hourly earnings between men and women of 18% among full-time workers
and 40% among those working part-time). Its terms of reference
identified the key factors as labour market experience (including
entry into employment, occupational segregation, full-time and
part-time work experience, progression in the workplace, the tax
and benefit system and experience before and after having children),
skills and education, and discrimination. It was also expected
to examine the measures "necessary to strengthen equal pay
legislation, including the case for equal pay reviews to be mandatory."[1]
2. Our predecessors decided in the autumn of 2004
to undertake an inquiry on the gender pay gap in parallel to the
work of the Commission. The previous Committee chose a fairly
narrowly defined but significant part of the Commission's remit,
the causes and effects of occupational segregation, including
the impact on the gender pay gap and whether occupational segregation
acts as a brake on the economy through the failure to increase
the number of women entering high-skilled jobs, thus worsening
skills shortages. The previous Committee published its Report
in the spring of 2005, noting that, because of the imminent general
election, it had been unable to treat the issues as comprehensively
as it had wished, but expressing the hope that "our successors
will return to it in due course, perhaps in the context of the
final report from the Women and Work Commission later this year."[2]
3. Following the election, the Women and Equalities
Unit, which had been part of the Department of Trade and Industry
while Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP was both Secretary of State for
that Department and Minister for Women, was transferred to the
Department for Communities and Local Government, headed by the
then Minister for Women, Rt Hon Ruth Kelly MP. However, our sister
Committee, the Communities and Local Government Committee, agreed
that for practical reasons we should undertake the follow-up inquiry.
As a result, we decided to set up a sub-Committee to take forward
this work, though the timetable was delayed because the report
of the Women and Work Commission (Shaping a Fairer Future)
was published only in February 2006, and the Government's
response to it, in the form of an Action Plan, appeared in September
2006.[3] Meanwhile, the
Government had also responded to our predecessors' Report.[4]
The sub-Committee's terms of reference were to examine:
the extent to which the Women and Work Commission's
recommendations met the concerns of those who gave evidence to
the Committee in the last Parliament; and
what the Government and other public bodies, employers
and trade unions were doing to implement those recommendations.
4. The Women and Work Commission made 40 recommendations,
many of which were very similar to those made by our predecessors,
although in some cases the Commission provided more detail about
extra financial support that it considered necessary. An annex
to this Report compares the two sets of conclusions, together
with the comments from the Government's Action Plan relating to
each of the Commission's recommendations. The Commission's final
recommendation was that it should be recalled "one year from
now, to receive a report into progress on our recommendations
and to comment on their effectiveness."[5]
The Government's report on progress in implementing the Commission's
recommendations (and rather confusingly called Towards a Fairer
Future) was published in April 2007.[6]
These five documents—the Commission's report, our predecessors'
Report and the Government's response to that, the Action Plan
and the one year on report—formed the starting point of
our inquiry. Subsequently, in June 2007, the Discrimination Law
Review published its preliminary conclusions on equalities legislation
in the form of a consultation paper, A framework for Fairness:
Proposals for a Single Equality Bill for Great Britain, which
also informed our inquiry.[7]
5. The sub-Committee took oral evidence from Baroness
Prosser, Chair of the Women and Work Commission; the Equal Opportunities
Commission (EOC); the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
and Trades Union Congress (TUC); and from two Government Ministers,
Mr David Lammy MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Skills, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and
Rt Hon Harriet Harman, QC, MP, Secretary of State for Equality
and the current Minister for Women. It received written evidence
from these witnesses and a further nine individuals and organisations,
including Mr Pat McFadden, MP, Minister for Employment Relations
and Postal Affairs, and Department for Business, Enterprise and
Regulatory Reform (BERR).[8]
It also received copies of other relevant documents: the Eve project
of South East Derbyshire College (on tackling occupational segregation
within training); and the trade union Unison's submission to the
Discrimination Law Review. The sub-Committee also made an informal
visit to the main office of the social enterprise 'Women like
Us'. We are very grateful to them and to all those who gave evidence
to the sub-Committee.
The current situation
6. In his written evidence to us, Pat McFadden, Minister
for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, referred to a forthcoming
BERR study on 'Part-time work and the gender pay gap in British
workplaces'.[9] The provisional
findings show that occupational segregation accounts for one-quarter
of the earnings gap between full-time men and part-time women,
while another fifth of the gap is explained by industry segregation.
He stated that there was no evidence of a 'part-time pay penalty'
additional to the gender pay gap faced by women in full-time jobs.
He referred to the right to request flexible working and stated
that the impact was being monitored by BERR. The Minister emphasised
the importance of the National Minimum Wage, which he suggested
had particularly benefited women by eliminating the hourly gender
pay gap in the lowest paid jobs. The BERR estimated that two-thirds
of the beneficiaries of the National Minimum Wage this year are
women.
1 The Commission's terms of reference are printed
as Appendix 5 to its report, Shaping a Fairer Future, February
2006 Hereafter, the Women and Work Commission's report as referred
to as 'WWC report'. Back
2
Trade and Industry Committee, Jobs for the Girls: The effect
of occupational segregation on the gender pay gap, Sixteenth
Report of Session 2004-05, HC 300, paragraph 3 (hereafter 'Trade
and Industry Committee, Sixteenth Report') Back
3
Department for Communities and Local Government, Government
Action Plan Implementing the Women and Work Commission recommendations
(hereafter 'Action Plan') Back
4
Published as Trade and Industry Committee, Jobs for the Girls:
Government Response to the Committee's Sixteenth Report of Session
2004-05, Sixth Special Report of Session 2005-06, HC 367 Back
5
WWC report, Executive Summary, pxvi Back
6
Department for Communities and Local Government, Towards a
Fairer Future: Implementing the Women and Work Commission Recommendations
(hereafter 'one year on report') Back
7
This consultation paper was formally published by the Department
for Education and Skills, Department of Trade and Industry, Department
for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Justice and Department for
Communities and Local Government. It is hereafter referred to
as 'Discrimination Law Review'. Back
8
The other eight submissions were from ACCA (the Association of
Certified Chartered Accountants), Amicus, Asda Stores Ltd, the
Fawcett Society (whose raison d'être is to promote
equality between the sexes), the Office of the Mayor of London,
Orange, Pam Walton (a consultant) and the YWCA (a charity working
with disadvantaged young women) BERR was formerly the Department
of Trade and Industry. Back
9
Ev 76 Back
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