House of Commons - Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Second Report

3 The workplace: the role of employers and trade unions and the legislative framework

31. Our predecessors began their inquiry into occupational segregation partly because it raised issues of equality and fairness in the workplace and partly because they believed that any undervaluing and under-use of a significant part of the workforce helped prolong skills shortages, reduced the UK's competitiveness and generally had a negative economic impact.[50] This was also the view of the Government in setting up the Women and Work Commission, and of those of our and our predecessors' witnesses who represent employers and workers. The EOC noted the warm welcome given to the report of the Women and Work Commission by both employers and trade unions, and the evidence of some cross-party support, too. The EOC detected in this greater engagement by interest groups in the issues of equality and the role of women in the economy, which gave promise of broader cultural change.[51]

32. Baroness Prosser stated that if businesses were to thrive and grow, they needed to make more effort to adapt to keep good female staff, not least as this cost less than recruiting and training new staff.[52] This would require not only a hard look at equal pay practices but also a more imaginative approach to issues such as long working hours and flexible working (part-time work, job sharing, annualised hours, flexitime, home-working and other options) and, through training and the nurturing of talent, making good use of their existing employees.

Equal pay reviews

33. One of the issues considered by our predecessors was whether it was desirable to make equal pay audits mandatory for all employers.[53] They found that the EOC and trade unions supported this idea, and the CBI opposed it. This situation has not changed. The gender equality duty imposed on the public sector as from April 2007 has acted as a spur to public authorities to use equal pay audits or similar surveys.[54] The public sector has a narrower pay gap than the private sector but is facing difficult problems at present with a mass of legal claims over equal pay. The EOC reported to us that the pay gap between men and women in the private sector was nearly ten percentage points larger than for the public sector, and that private sector employers were less likely to undertake equal pay reviews, which, it suggested, were helpful in identifying not only pay discrimination but other causes of the pay gap such as occupational segregation and a lack of flexible working.[55] The TUC argued: "you are never going to identify a gender pay segregation problem or unequal pay … until you have open and transparent processes whereby you can examine grading systems, pay structures, promotion opportunities and all the rest of it. We have had years and years and years of employers telling us that it will happen, they will do it, it is good practice and it is not happening enough."[56]

34. The CBI, on the other hand, appeared to see equal pay audits as revealing only pay discrimination, which it did not consider a significant contributor to the gender pay gap. It attributed the gap first to the subject and the career choices made by girls at school, and then to the disruption to their careers when they had families, and, in some cases, to anomalies caused by merging pay scales after a take over or merger.[57] A major difference between men and women was, it argued, that men did not have career breaks and therefore reached more senior positions than women. In support of this view, it said that in the 22-29 age group the pay gap between men and women was only 2%.[58] Other witnesses disputed this, citing research by the EOC which concluded that the pay gap between graduates who had taken the same degree subject was as much as 15% shortly after graduation.[59] Baroness Prosser agreed the situation was complex, and noted that the pay gap arose partly because women do not, largely speaking, push themselves for pay rises and promotion in the same way that men do.[60]

35. The CBI also considered that more companies were already voluntarily conducting equal pay audits. It said that of large companies (with more than 5,000 staff) 58% had already done an audit, against the target of 45% by 2008, and a further 14% were planning to do so, and concluded that compulsion was unnecessary as the spread of good practice was enough. It reported that half the audits undertaken had revealed no pay gap. Where the audits had revealed problems, the CBI considered that employers had taken appropriate action, such as reviewing the performance management systems, using diversity training or introducing new pay structures. It also argued that small companies neither needed nor could afford equal pay audits, which were very labour-intensive and expensive.[61] The CBI estimated that it would cost a company with 700 staff £14,000 to pay an external consultant to conduct an equal pay audit—money that could be better used training managers on handling diversity and flexibility, for example; the TUC said that it could do the audit for a quarter of that price.[62]

36. The advocates of equal pay reviews did not deny the CBI's claims that these could be cumbersome and anyway did not provide a panacea for the gender pay gap. Baroness Prosser went so far as to say that the companies most in need of an equal pay audit were not large, unionised companies, where pay systems were fairly transparent, but places like law firms or financial companies, where pay rates were not transparent.[63] She also noted that, while such reviews showed discrimination within a company, they were ineffective in tackling the problem of businesses where the workforce consisted almost entirely of men or almost entirely of women.[64] The EOC wanted employers voluntarily to take the initiative in ensuring that women were neither directly nor indirectly discriminated against in their companies. It suggested that, even without statutory compulsion, employers should check regularly whether a gender pay gap was apparent in their organisation and, if so, what were the causes, and then act to deal with those causes.[65] However, the EOC considered that, if there was pay discrimination within an organisation, by far the best way to tackle it was an equal pay review.[66] The EOC said that, in response to concerns about the burden and expense of a full audit, it had produced a template for a 'light touch' equality check, which would reveal the presence of any of three causes of the pay gap (discrimination, job segregation and lack of flexible working), was proportionate to the size of the business and would enable even large companies to proceed on the basis of samples from groups of workers rather than an examination of every individual, and would result in an action plan to reduce or remove the causes of the pay gap.[67] The Secretary of State for Equality described this equality check as being designed specifically for SMEs and consisting of an outline of the business case for such a check, a short questionnaire that should take no more than 15 minutes to complete, and guidance on what to do if the results of the check indicated that there was a problem. She told us that the Government hoped to pilot this equality check on the BusinessLink website for three months from November 2007 with the help of the CBI and British Chambers of Commerce. If the pilot was successful, the equality check would then be released on that website for general use.[68]

37. Connected with this, the EOC suggested that, instead of making audits compulsory, a more productive approach would be to impose on business, and the third sector, a similar requirement to the public sector equality duty. The thrust of such a duty would be to require employers to inquire into whether there was a pay gap among their workforce (without stipulating the means) and then to take appropriate action to tackle any such gap.[69] The EOC suggested: "Far from adding to the regulatory burden, this would simplify and modernise the law and reduce the risk of tribunal cases."[70] This suggestion was supported by Amicus, the Fawcett Society (though both of these continued also to advocate mandatory equal pay audits as part of a gender equality 'health check'), the Mayor of London and the TUC.[71]

38. The Discrimination Law Review took a slightly different line, suggesting that there might be a case for introducing a "voluntary equality standard scheme which would set out what businesses, as both employers and providers of goods and services, need to do to comply with discrimination law and achieve higher standards of good practice on equality and diversity." The consultation paper issued by the Discrimination Law Review asked whether this would be beneficial and then set out two options for such a scheme, an independently assessed accredited standard, or a non-accredited good practice and compliance tool.[72]

39. The CBI did not rule out completely the idea of extending the equality duty to the private sector. It commented that it would like to see evidence that the duty was actually working in the public sector before any extension.[73]

40. We asked the Secretary of State for Equality whether pay audits should be made compulsory. While noting that the Government had yet to reach a conclusion on this issue, she replied that transparency was vital, but pay audits were not the only way to achieve that and they did not necessarily address pay gaps. She emphasised that different sized companies needed different approaches, not least to ensure the personal privacy of staff; but she thought at the very least in all but the smallest companies it should be possible to supply figures for the average pay of men and the average pay of women without breaching privacy.[74]

41. There is a need for increased pay transparency but, as our predecessors noted, the experience of equal pay audits has been mixed.[75] Some of the criticisms of them would be met if an effective 'light touch' approach were developed. We were encouraged by the description of the prototype 'light touch' check given by the Secretary of State and recommend that the Government, the CBI, the British Chamber of Commerce, Regional Development Agencies and other representative bodies make strenuous efforts to publicise this tool when it is launched generally, so that the use of it swiftly becomes best practice among smaller businesses.

42. Another important criticism, that equal pay checks were of doubtful effectiveness in making companies take the issue of occupational segregation more seriously, could also be met if pay differences were regarded as a proxy for inequality more generally and the form of the audit required employers to consider wider questions such as why, for example, most women in their organisation were employed in the lower grade jobs and most of the managers were men.

43. However useful equal pay reviews might be at uncovering problems, in themselves they would not ensure that any problems were tackled. We can see the attractions of the public sector gender equality duty in this regard, with its requirements to publish an action plan, report on progress, and take the actions described in the plan in a specified period. The duty also is not prescriptive about the ways to achieve the stated objectives: it leaves decisions on means to the authority implementing the duty. However, it is too early as yet to judge the success of the duty, which came into force only in April. We recommend that the Government evaluate its effectiveness in two years' time and, if it has been successful, the Government should extend the duty to the private sector. Certainly, if the pay gap continues to decline at such a slow rate, the Government must look at such further measures as the extension of the gender equality duty and consider making pay audits mandatory.

Equal pay legislation

44. Most of our witnesses submitted their written evidence to us and gave oral evidence before the results of the Discrimination Law Review became known. With the exception of the CBI, which thought that a major overhaul of the legislation was neither necessary nor appropriate, and which suggested that a lot of 'fiddly changes' would be even worse for managers to implement, our witnesses were of the view that the current division of the legislation between the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts was confusing and complicated, and that the provisions relating to pay were unfair and had spurred an unsustainable number of employment tribunal cases. They called for the legislation to be merged into a single equality act.[76] The EOC believed that the current separation of equality legislation into two strands under two Acts of Parliament ran counter to EU law, which treated discrimination in relation to employment in the same way as other forms of discrimination.[77]

45. The EOC said that the problems with the current Equal Pay Act were it was too slow, too cumbersome, too ineffective, it placed the onus on individuals to complain after the event and it did not stop discriminatory pay systems in the first place.[78] The TUC added that by placing the responsibility on individual employees to complain and litigate, it had the invidious effect of potentially wrecking the relationship between employer and employee; and that the process was time-consuming, difficult and attracted 'no win, no fee' solicitors to the area. The TUC, like several other witnesses, strongly supported the introduction of a provision allowing 'representative actions' (where an organisation such as a trade union or the EOC took action on behalf of a group of complainants).[79] Another frequent request was for it to be possible to use a 'hypothetical comparator' in relation to pay. The Discrimination Law Review describes the current situation as follows:

At the moment, the law requires a person bringing a claim under the Equal Pay Act to identify an existing person of the opposite sex who receives, will receive or has received better pay or benefits for doing the same work, work rated as equivalent or work of equal value. This person is described as an 'actual comparator'. If hypothetical comparators could be used, a person could bring an equal pay claim where no actual comparators are available. The claimant would need to show that if a person of the opposite sex, paid by the same source, were to do the same work, work rated as equivalent or work of equal value, that person would receive better pay or benefits than the claimant does.[80]

Our witnesses argued that hypothetical comparators should be allowed, not least because occupational segregation meant that often there were no actual comparators.[81] The EOC gave examples of where it felt hypothetical comparators might be used, one of which was where part-timers, all of whom were women, were excluded from certain benefits such as occupational sick pay or occupational pensions. However, the EOC thought that, where there was an actual comparator, the present principle of and processes for determining equal value should be retained.[82]

46. Other suggestions for provisions to be included in a single equality act were that there should be a clear purpose clause at the beginning setting out the aims and objectives of the legislation, in the light of which the subsequent provisions should be read; that, to combat indirect discrimination, and using the model of the Disability Discrimination Act, there should be a duty to make reasonable adjustments to enable the employment of under-represented groups; that the time limits for bringing claims and the remedies for claimants should be "harmonised up"; and in particular that anyone winning an employment tribunal claim on the grounds of sex discrimination in any respect should have the right to be reinstated by her/his employer to the same job on the same terms and conditions.[83] Both the Fawcett Society and Amicus considered that employers who lost employment tribunal cases should be required to conduct an equal pay audit and take action on the basis of its findings.[84] More generally, the EOC wanted an Act which "has a much stronger focus on institutions taking actions to tackle problems rather than waiting for individuals to complain after something had gone wrong."[85]

47. The Discrimination Law Review rejected most of these suggestions. It ruled out a hypothetical comparator on the grounds that: "Taking account of the uncertainties that hypothetical comparators would create, and the potential for significant numbers of unsuccessful claims which would still incur litigation and processing costs, we are not persuaded that allowing the use of hypothetical comparators would give any benefit in practice."[86] It also rejected the idea of representative actions, saying:

a number of stakeholders, including business, have expressed reservations about creating a further mechanism for litigation. … Although [representative actions] may assist those with legitimate claims, the system can also benefit those with spurious claims, who may not even have felt aggrieved until encouraged to join a representative action. Representative actions on behalf of a group of unnamed individuals [our emphasis][87] are also particularly difficult to quantify, making it hard for an organisation to consider early settlement proposals which would keep legal costs down.[88]

(The EOC, among others, made it clear to us that their recommendation was for representative, not for class, actions which would be taken for a group of named individuals who were already considering claiming under the Act.[89]) The Review also recommended the retention of the distinction between contractual issues (covering basic pay and benefits and currently falling under the Equal Pay Act) and non-contractual benefits (such as special bonuses, childcare subsidies or employee share options and currently falling under the Sex Discrimination Act). This means that there would continue to be different defences for employers, different remedies and different time limits for bringing claims for the two types of payment.[90]

48. We asked the Secretary of State whether she was content with the conclusions of the Discrimination Law Review. She explained that the Government was still assessing the responses to the Review, and therefore she could not comment on issues such as hypothetical comparators and representative actions. However, she indicated that the responses to the Review had made it clear that the Government could go further than the sort of consolidation measure proposed by the Review, in particular with reference to three issues: equal pay, the use of public procurement to promote equality, and pay transparency. She assured us that the delay in publication of a draft Equality Bill, far from indicating that the Government intended to step back from its commitment to equality, was a result of the Government's willingness to go further than the Review recommended.[91]

49. Although the Discrimination Law Review suggested that there were disadvantages to the amendments to legislation which have been proposed by our witnesses, the current law is clearly not working well. There has been such a glut of equal pay claims against local authority employers that neither they nor the tribunal system can manage them; and the heavy involvement of 'no win, no fee' lawyers in this area shows the potential for litigation to spread into other public sector areas including those which have conducted pay reviews, such as the NHS 'Agenda for Change' programme, and through the private sector as well. This can also make it difficult to negotiate agreements to incorporate effective equal pay audits and may discourage employers from embarking on pay structure reviews. More fundamentally, given the number of claims, the law does not appear to be effective in preventing discrimination in the first place. The Discrimination Law Review failed to address these problems adequately. We therefore recommend the Government to look again at the possibility of introducing provisions to allow hypothetical comparators and representative actions, and to simplify the law in relation to time limits for bringing cases, remedies and defences for employers. This would not reduce the difficulty of reaching a fair view of issues like 'equal value' in each case, but it would reduce some of the complexity of the law as it currently stands.

50. We were particularly concerned that at present there is no obligation on an employer who has lost an equal pay case to ensure that other members of the workforce are being paid appropriately. We recommend that employment tribunals are given the power to order employers to conduct equal pay reviews and act upon the findings.

51. On the immediate problem faced by local authorities, we recommend that the Government should examine the role played by some 'no win, no fee' lawyers in stimulating claims which further complicate the situation and are sometimes contrary to the best interests of the claimant.

Flexible working and quality part-time jobs

52. Baroness Prosser, the EOC, the TUC and the Secretary of State for Equality all identified the dearth of quality part-time jobs as one of the main reasons for the persistence of the gender pay gap, and a waste of the experience and skills of many older women.[92] The EOC's investigation into flexible and part-time working suggested that 5.6 million people (80% of the UK's 7 million part-time workers) were in jobs that did not use their potential: over 3.5 million of them had actually used higher qualifications or skills or had had more management/supervisory responsibilities in previous jobs.[93] The EOC also said that part-time working should not be seen just as an option for mothers of young children: nearly half the increase in part-time work over the past 20 years had been among men. It noted that, with the weakening in the pattern of single careers over 40 years of full-time work, more people wanted to work part-time at different periods of their life, whether as students, or partially-retired, or carers, or as fathers of young children, or to have time to pursue voluntary work or other interests. Moreover, part-time work was often a good way of getting disabled people into the workforce.[94] The Secretary of State for Equality emphasised the importance of ensuring that part-time workers were given access to training and to opportunities for promotion.[95]

53. Several of those who submitted written evidence to us gave examples of good practice in relation to part-time work. ASDA described its part-time female managers project. Analysis of managers had shown that there was a disproportion of men as compared with the workforce overall. The aim was to increase the number of female managers, but this was not straightforward as the perception that managers had to be full-time and worked long hours was a disincentive to women applying. ASDA had therefore created job shares, and had also discovered that some traditionally hard to fill vacancies, such as managers on night shifts, particularly suited women in certain circumstances. ASDA reported that 40% of its managers and of its senior managers were women. ASDA also offered nearly 20 other flexible working options, and it felt this was a significant factor in its record of having the highest rate of staff retention in the retail sector.[96]

54. While welcoming the principle of the Government's Quality Part Time Work Initiative, the CBI and TUC both lamented the fact that the Government had provided only a tenth of the funding requested by the Women and Work Commission (£500,000 instead of £5 million). They also were concerned that the beneficiaries of the available funding were companies that already had a good record for initiatives in this area; the TUC and CBI argued that, with more notice, and the full £5 million they could have produced a set of proposals for things like local (rather than company-based) job-share registers, and part-time managers in sectors experiencing difficulties in recruiting or where there were large groups of women who might benefit from such initiatives.[97] We, too, consider that this initiative has been under-funded, given the importance of quality part-time work in relation to both reducing occupational segregation and tackling the worse, and more obstinately static, gender pay gap which is that in relation to women's hourly pay for part-time work. We recommend that the Government increase the funding to the initial target of £5 million, and seek the help of the CBI, TUC and similar organisations in proposing initiatives among companies which would otherwise be unaware of or reluctant to try best practice.

55. Part-time work is only one sort of flexible working. The CBI and TUC have assembled case studies of practical ways in which companies have succeeded in reducing long hours, reforming working practices and achieving flexibility for both employers and employees.[98] Pam Walton, a consultant in this area, suggested ways of spreading good practice in relation to flexible working, such as a database on the internet of jobs already done on a reduced hours or job-share basis, the use of existing local agencies to put highly-qualified potential job-share partners in contact with each other, and encouraging trade unions and trade associations to establish job-matching services.[99] As recommended by the Women and Work Commission, the Government has launched an Exemplar Employer Initiative, working with Opportunity Now to encourage employers to adopt best practice. It has over 100 exemplar employers working with schools, supporting women returners and carers, encouraging women to break into non-traditional subjects (like science, engineering, ICT and construction), and developing women's management and leadership skills, as well as undertaking other projects to tackle occupational segregation. The Government has been disseminating best practice gleaned from these employers through a best practice conference and guidance published on the internet.[100]

56. The CBI argued that 90% of employers now offered some form of flexible working: flexible time, which encompassed any sort of non-standard hours (flexitime, part-time, term-time, job share, compressed hours, annualised hours); flexible location (homeworking, working on the move, from telecentres, satellite offices); and flexible contracts (outsourcing, agency workers, temporary or fixed-term labour).[101] The Government estimated in April 2007 that 5.4 million employees (3.2 million of whom were women), or about 22% of the total workforce, had some form of flexible working arrangement.[102] The CBI also said that smaller firms were more likely to agree to requests for flexible working than larger ones.[103]

57. Our witnesses disagreed over whether the right of employees to request flexible working should be extended beyond the current eligible groups (parents of children under the age of six, or of disabled children under the age of 18, and—since April 2007—carers of adults). Amicus, the TUC and the EOC wanted the right to request to be extended to all workers, partly in order to remove the stigma from flexible working (the perception that those who requested it were less committed to their jobs than other employees) and partly because they believed more widespread flexible working would enable employers to plan better. The EOC commented: "Employers have found that so long as flexible working applies only to certain groups, the benefits to the organisation are constrained by the inability to manage the issue in the round." The TUC thought that greater flexibility could enable employers more easily to meet customer demands for provision of services round the clock. As when it gave evidence to our predecessors, Amicus was of the view that the right to request should be strengthened as well as widened: it wanted employees to be given the right to challenge an employer's refusal of a request in an employment tribunal."[104] On the other hand, the CBI, while agreeing that the current right to request had worked fairly well, said that its members were finding it increasingly difficult to accommodate new requests without detriment to their businesses and did not want the right to flexible working extended further in the current Parliament.[105] The Secretary of State for Equality considered that the extension of the right to carers of adults was of particular significance, noting that, with an ageing population in the UK, this right was likely to become increasingly important to employees.[106]

58. The Government said in April 2007 that it "will continue to consider the case for extending the right to request flexible working to the parents of older children, taking into account the impact of the extension to carers, and working with business."[107]We agree that the right should be extended in consultation with employers and their representatives; but we believe that while the Government's thinking appears to be limited to parents and carers, this ignores the wider changes in work which mean that more people will change career, have portmanteau careers or wish to work part time at the beginning or end of their working lives, and it also risks leaving flexible working in a (perceived if not actual) ghetto as ' a woman's problem' and a sign of a lack of commitment among nearly half the workforce. We recommend the Government consider a gradual extension of the right to request flexible working to the whole workforce.

59. In relation to Amicus's suggestion that employees should be given the right to challenge any refusal by their employer to grant a request for flexible working at an employment tribunal, we share our predecessors' view that as yet this has not proved necessary as there has been no evidence of widespread refusal by employers to agree to requests. However, the Government should keep the situation under review.

Company culture: role models, middle managers and trade unions

ROLE MODELS

60. The Government and the Women and Work Commission emphasised the need for role models of successful women to encourage and inspire others to emulate them. One of the Government's initiatives has been to set up a network of 1,000 women entrepreneurs to inspire, advise and support women in setting up their own businesses.[108] The Government is also looking for role models of women on company boards. However, despite the recommendations made in both the Higgs review of corporate governance and the Tyson review of diversity on company boards,[109] progress in achieving greater female representation is slow: the Government reported in April 2007 that the latest FTSE report on the subject had shown that only 10% of FTSE 100 directors were women, and the CBI admitted that recently there had been a stagnation or decline in the number of FTSE 250 directors.[110] However, the CBI argued this was not the whole picture: the proportion of female managers overall had risen from 8% to 30% and far more women were setting up their own companies.[111] The TUC also considered that the picture was mixed. It suggested that one of the reasons for women setting up their own companies was the 'glass ceiling' and the 'clubbish' culture of boards. On the other hand, it noted, some companies were taking seriously the business case for greater diversity in the composition of their boards, because they were either targeting women as customers or were seeking to recruit women as employees.[112]

61. There are good examples of successful businesswomen who can act as role models. However, progress is patchy and it will take some time before the number of these pioneers increases to the sort of critical mass which makes women top managers and entrepreneurs seem commonplace rather than exceptional in the UK.

MIDDLE MANAGERS

62. None of the possible legislative changes or attempts to spread best practice will succeed in reducing occupational segregation and the gender pay gap without a fundamental cultural change. Key to such a change is the role of middle managers, who are often the people who make decisions about flexible working, performance rewards and recommendations for promotion, and who set the tone for company culture (whether it is overtly sexist, whether harassment and discrimination are tolerated or rooted out).

63. However, the EOC was concerned that many middle managers had not been trained to cope with issues like requests for flexible working. Its survey of HR professionals in a variety of organisations had found that only one in eight thought that their organisation gave enough training to managers in this area.[113]

64. Managers in smaller companies, though more confident about dealing with requests for flexible working, were, according to the CBI, more worried about other actions that could be taken, such as identifying groups of women who might want to train for new areas of work or encouraging women to apply for more senior positions. They feared that these could be seen as discrimination in favour of women rather than positive action. The CBI considered that they needed better guidance about what was permissible, and expressed a hope that the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights would make such guidance a priority.[114]

65. There is clearly a need for more training and advice to be made available to managers to give them the ability and confidence to adopt new ways of working and of nurturing talent in order to enable their employees to use their skills, to their own benefit as well as that of the company. We support the CBI's suggestion that the CEHR should make a priority of issuing guidance on what types of actions would be considered discriminatory and what could be seen as positive action.

THE ROLE OF TRADE UNIONS

66. As our predecessors pointed out, trade unions themselves do not have an unblemished record in supporting women in the workplace, and the culture of employees needs to change as much as that of employers if women are to receive equal treatment at work. Baroness Prosser expressed a wish that trade unions should be more proactive in discovering why women were 'lagging behind' in pay, why more training was given to some groups of workers than others and whether there was a consistent approach amongst managers to issues such as requests for flexible working. This was the role she envisaged for union equality representatives.[115] The EOC concurred.[116] The TUC considered the role of the union equality representative absolutely essential in working with management to help to bring about broader cultural changes in the workplace. It was therefore very disappointed that the Government had decided to fund the programme of equality reps from the existing Union Modernisation Fund rather than through additional and separate funding, as had been recommended by the Women and Work Commission.[117]

67. Given the difficulty of bringing about cultural change, which requires the joint efforts of both trade unions and management, and the success of the union learning representatives, we, too, are disappointed that the Government's support for union equality representatives appears lukewarm.

68. The Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs gave us information about the equality representative projects already being funded and those to which funding were awarded in October 2007.[118] Most of them concentrate on fairly basic training for union equality representatives, so it is difficult to predict yet whether they will have the direct impact on the workplace hoped for by Baroness Prosser.

General conclusions

69. We welcome the examples our witnesses gave of close working and co-operation in spreading good practice between trade unions and employers organisations. We hope that they will continue to be able to build on this now that the immediate flurry of activity after publication of the Women and Work Commission's report has subsided.

70. We were told of numerous imaginative and practical initiatives to address gender inequality in the workplace, both within and outside government programmes. However, we are concerned that many of the organisations taking part in government programmes are either companies which have already shown leadership in this area or are in the broader public sector, such as Royal Mail and universities. We hope that best practice will be taken up more widely and recommend the Government, via the Commission for Equality and Human Rights and the department that has the central role in communicating with business, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, to make spreading best practice in this area a priority. We would like to see the spread of best practice through the economy adopted as one of the actions both the CEHR and BERR pledge themselves to take under the public sector equality duty.

50 Trade and Industry Committee, Sixteenth Report, paragraph 1 Back

51 Q 58 Back

52 Qq 33 and 37-38 Back

53 Trade and Industry Committee, Sixteenth report, paragraphs 51-52 Back

54 Q 76 (EOC) The public sector duty is discussed further in paragraphs 71-78 below Back

55 Ev 85 Back

56 Q 132 Back

57 Q 132 Back

58 Q 87 Back