Mr.
Harper: My hon. Friend might be interested to
know—I am sure the Minister will be, especially as the issue is
relevant to the public sector—that every single Government
Department pays its disabled employees less on average than its
non-disabled employees. In a number of them, that pay gap is
significantly higher than the gender pay gap. The Home Office, which is
the worst offender, pays disabled employees on average a third less
than non-disabled employees. I am sure that that is not a comparison of
people doing like-for-like jobs and that it has to do with the level of
the organisation that people have reached. However, it touches on
exactly the same issue, and the problem is bigger than the gender pay
gap in some Government organisations.
John
Penrose: I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful
intervention. It precisely illustrates the point. If clause
73 is the answer to pay gaps, why is it the answer to only the gender
pay gap?
The
Solicitor-General: May I ask the hon. Gentleman a
different question? If he is going to vote against the clause, why is
he now trying to attach disability to something he is going to
oppose?
John
Penrose: Because we are trying to probe the
Government’s reasons for doing this only for the gender pay gap.
We think that there is an inconsistency in their logic. If the clause
is, as the Government claim, the answer to the problem, why should it
be applied only to gender pay reporting and not other inequities?
Alternatively, if the clause is not the answer, we will be happy to
vote it down, because other things should be done first. That explains
why we have tabled the new clause, although we are also slightly bound
by the selection of the Chair. It is important that we explore the
matter. Why, under the Government’s proposals, will the measure
apply only to gender pay reporting, and not to other strands of
discrimination—disability was the one that we happened to choose
to illustrate our
point?
Lynne
Featherstone: It is nice to see you in the Chair again,
Lady
Winterton. From
listening to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare, it seems that he
wishes to minimise the seriousness of the discrimination that women
experience, either because of their “choice” of jobs, or
because of their absence from the workplace due to having babies. I
will certainly look at the figures he puts forward, but given my
impression from the evidence session, I think that he has reduced the
number as far as possible. The 13 per cent. figure that he quoted, I
understand, was basically a 17 per cent. pay differential in full-time
work. We are starting from a different basis and we might not agree on
figures.
John
Penrose: I take the hon. Lady’s point about having
to be very careful with figures that we cite. Mine came from the ONS,
as I thought that I should base my position on an official set of
numbers. If she has a figure that she feels is better, I ask her to let
me
know.
Lynne
Featherstone: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that
intervention. I have figures supplied by all the normal organisations.
My anxiety is not truly with the gender pay information clause per se,
but the timing of its introduction through regulation. I feel—I
believe that there are Labour Members who feel this too—that
women have waited a very long time. Organisations have been able to
reduce the pay gap voluntarily for some time, although the statistics
that I read from the EHRC on the number of employers that voluntarily
complete equal pay audits make it clear that the rate of progress is
pretty slow. I am not convinced that another four years of
volunteering, even with the work that the Minister says will go on
regarding metrics, will produce the step change that women need and
deserve—and they deserve it
now. I
was quite shocked by the CBI’s presentation at the evidence
session because, like Conservative Members, it was pushing the
idea that there is very little discrimination—I am still not
convinced by that—or rather that that is not the reason for the
pay
gap.
John
Penrose: This is an important nuance, but it is only a
nuance. It is not a question of trying to minimise the level of
discrimination. The point that I was trying
to make was that no one, including the Minister, according to what she
said this morning, knows precisely how much of the gender pay gap is
due to discrimination. We can put boundaries on it, but we do not know
within those boundaries how much is due to discrimination. I am sure
that if she feels that my calculations of the boundaries are wrong, she
will present alternative figures. None the less, it is important to
know what we know. Without coming over all Donald Rumsfeld, it is
important to understand what the known knowns and the known unknowns
are.
Lynne
Featherstone: Of course there are other factors, but I was
merely saying that I felt that minimisation was going
on. The
factors are being addressed. The Government have made tremendous
strides on child care, and initiatives such as Sure Start have changed
lives and made significant inroads into the problems. All the things
that might discriminate or do discriminate against women give them less
choice and less money than their male equivalents. That issue needs to
be addressed and, to some extent, it is being addressed. The
significant problem that remains is hidden within business in this
country. The whole point of gender pay information is to create
transparency and remove the problem from its hiding place so that we
can all see what is
happening. Let
us say that the CBI was right about this work. I will listen intently
to the argument about the cost to business, but I doubt that it would
be anything like as much as the hon. Gentleman says. However, let us
see what is happening. We have recently, in the case of our own
expenses, seen that transparency has been the only thing that can shake
the establishment and change what was being hidden underneath.
Transparency is the answer when it comes to providing the step change
that we want on discrimination in respect of women’s
pay.
Mr.
Harper: One thing that the hon. Lady is missing is the
information that one would need to produce. That is one reason why the
Minister, rightly, has got the EHRC to carry out this discussion. Part
of the process is straightforward, such as publishing a list of what
people are paid. The difficulty comes when considering the content of
jobs, comparable jobs and comparable pay. In a large organisation, if a
bunch of people are doing job A and another bunch are doing job B, and
they are the same, that is fine. However, if there is a multiplicity of
jobs, it will mean considering the content of jobs, the skills required
for them and what people are paid, and then making comparisons to
determine whether that makes sense. That will not be straightforward.
The CBI, the unions and the EHRC are trying to work out whether there
is a way of producing that information in a simple form, but I suspect
that it is not
straightforward.
Lynne
Featherstone: That is clearly one issue that we have to
grapple with, because we are talking in advance of people coming out
with the information or the metrics, around which there might be a
coalition of the willing to agree the way forward. As the hon.
Gentleman will know from this morning’s sitting, I am in favour
of somewhat more rigorous and formalised pay audits, which would not go
around metrics, but would involve, as he described, full disclosure of
pay, levels of pay, values of pay and packages relating to pay. As I
said,
the only way to make the step change that women want
for equality—without having to wait another 39 years, as we have
waited since the Equal Pay Act—is to make these things
compulsory. I am not convinced by the voluntary way
forward. 4.45
pm
John
Mason: Does the hon. Lady agree that we are getting rather
a lot of red herrings from the Conservatives? Companies produce masses
of information—probably too much—in their accounts. For
example, they produce a list of pay for the top directors within bands.
That information is also open to debate and discussion as to whether
one company is paying its directors too much compared with another.
That is not a reason for not producing the information. The first
priority should be to make the information available, which may then
lead to other questions that the Conservatives can worry about in due
course.
Lynne
Featherstone: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful
intervention; he is entirely right. The hon. Member for
Weston-super-Mare was talking about an inordinate expense, and the
point needs to be developed further. I do not accept what he said, but,
were he to be right about the cost, no one would take such action
voluntarily. [Interruption.] From a sedentary
position, he indicates with an arm gesture that the idea is to get
everyone off the
hook.
John
Penrose: Actually, my arm gesture was supposed to indicate
that the hon. Lady is right that if the costs are as high as I fear
they are, no one—including her, I hope—would want
to take such action.
Lynne
Featherstone: I do not accept the figures; I am waiting
for the Minister to come back on them. From my experience in business,
what we are discussing is not rocket science—particularly for
big companies that have the wherewithal and the IT systems to produce
such information. Little companies mostly know their pay levels. There
are some issues about correctly valuing work, so we will have to
disagree—pretty profoundly, actually.
Issues around
discrimination are hidden in the system. The CBI has a point that often
women and men are in different types of job and women’s work is
paid less, even if it should be of equal value. In the evidence
sessions, the Fawcett Society gave the example of paying people who
pack meat in a factory differently from forklift drivers. Even though
the skills and experience needed for those two jobs are comparable,
because one job has been female dominated it tends to be a lot lower
paid than the one that has been male dominated—that is partly a
link to the previous discussion. Those employers are breaking the law
and not necessarily realising it. That is why we have to require them
to address the issue. If that information was published, it could be
seen, realised and addressed, and the issue could be dealt with. There
are some bad employers who get away with underpaying women and
therefore resist transparency. Then there are those who discriminate
without knowing it because they do not even realise that they are
underpaying or undervaluing the work of women.
On
the issue of transparency and the CBI’s assertion that many of
their companies voluntarily publish gender pay information, we feel
that the good guys will always publish such information. However, we
are dealing not just with the good guys, and we have to go after those
companies who use the fact that no one can see what they are doing to
pay women less, either in particular or
systemically. I
will be brief because we have already covered which factor is the
largest and what the Fawcett Society said about the pay gap. However, a
huge penalty attaches to part-time working, to motherhood, to
discontinuous labour market records and to care and responsibility, the
vast majority of which accrue to women. Organisations that are good at
addressing pay, and that are open and above board and will publish such
information, tend also to be those companies that have good policies
and good practice and that deal with and get the benefits of diversity
by promoting equality for women. Liberal Democrat Members feel that the
introduction of mandatory pay audits would have a beneficial effect on
companies.
The
Solicitor-General: The hon. Lady has mentioned that a
number of companies already disclose such information. According to the
Tory version, however, they must be completely mad, because disclosure
is so expensive that it would be silly to do
it.
Lynne
Featherstone: Conservative Members are coming from a
particular place in this discussion. Those companies that already have
pay audit systems seem to do everything better—they seem to have
women in much higher grades, better policies for pregnancy and
maternity, part-time and flexible working and so on. Liberal Democrat
Members think that mandatory pay audits would have greatly beneficial
effects—immediately and compulsorily—making a real
difference to women. However, we understand the Government’s
position and what they are trying to do. We do not agree with their
position, but we will not oppose it.
Transparency,
ultimately, is the key. That is why pay audits are necessary and must
be mandatory. We cannot wait another four years. We did not introduce
them in the times of plenty, or when the sun was shining, as
Conservative Members like to put it. We do not want to see the
proposals kicked into the long grass, particularly with the uncertainty
about who will be the next Government. It is clear that we must take
action now, and that voluntary pay audits are like waiting for Godot.
If the Government fail to take such singular action in the Bill to
change women’s lives for good, ironically—for they have
an honourable record on equality—they will decree that women
will remain second-class citizens, possibly in perpetuity if there is a
change of
Government. A
Labour Government could and should, if only for legacy, right the
historic wrong and change the future of women. Unequal pay has meant
women suffering in so many ways. Women have so many caring duties and
come off so badly in terms of separation, divorce, child rearing and so
on that, at the very least, we should ensure that they receive equal
pay for equal work. If we do not do so now, then when, because 2013
will be too
late?
The
Solicitor-General: Interestingly, the Conservative
Opposition seek simultaneously to vote down a clause that they intend
to add to—I am sure that there is a line of rationality
somewhere and that I am failing to find it.
New
clause 9 would enable the Government to require private sector
employers with at least 250 employees to report on their disability pay
gap as well as their gender pay gap under clause 73. The hon. Member
for Weston-super-Mare has spent a considerable amount of time, not just
today but on many occasions, seeking to minimise the issue of pay
discrimination against women in business. He does not tell a convincing
story, and I shall come to that when I have dealt with the disability
point.
The hon.
Gentleman tries to pinpoint the problem, which he thinks is not the pay
gap. He thinks the problem is elsewhere, including in poverty of
aspiration among women—a deplorable assertion that is not too
far from blaming the poor for being poor, as the Tories have habitually
done. When he starts talking about one of the reasons being that women
do not have expectations or
aspirations—
Mr.
Harper: Will the Minister give
way?
The
Solicitor-General: No. What I shall do is point out that
there is a better understanding of where the disability pay gap comes
from. The hon. Gentleman has had plenty of time to make his position
clear. He made it all too clear for people watching—I see nods
from all quarters. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare has, frankly,
not a clue about the cause of the gender pay gap, but he argues a
particular point to try to counter the need for a long-overdue
toughening up of
provision. What
is clearer is the cause of the disability pay gap. Let me deal with it
numerically first. The disability pay gap is 6.4 per cent., compared
with the figures that the hon. Gentleman quoted for the gender pay gap,
which is much bigger. He of course excluded entirely from consideration
the sharp end of the gender pay gap, which shows that the difference in
the average hourly rate paid to a woman working part-time and a man
working full-time is about 30 per cent. The lesser pay gap in relation
to disability is none the less important. The hon. Gentleman made the
point that we need to get more disabled people into work and to get
them further up the ladder once they are in. That is where the deficit
currently is in relation to disability. There is a clearer
understanding of the causes and a readier
recipe. In
any event, we already require private sector companies with more than
250 employees to include a statement in their directors’ reports
on how they go about recruiting disabled people, retaining people when
they become disabled during employment, training disabled employees and
ensuring that they progress. That is the focus. We should continue to
get more disabled people into work and ensure that they are represented
at all levels of the workplace. That, rather than the new clause, is
the route to reducing the disability pay gap and, more widely, to
engendering better participation and fuller lives for disabled people
because they get into better-quality jobs. Disabled people’s
participation has increased some 10 per cent. since 1998. Some
Government initiatives have helped, but we need to get people further
in work as well as getting them into work. The positive action
provisions in the Bill will help with that.
We already
have a specialist disability employment programme that works with
thousands of disabled people every year. In last year’s Green
Paper, the Department for Work and Pensions said that we would press
ahead
with an enhanced specialist disability employment programme: work
preparation, Workstep and the job introduction scheme. From 2010, that
will provide a more flexible and personalised service to those disabled
people with the highest support needs. Last year, we
doubled the access to work budget, which helps disabled people move
into work and to stay in work. It provides funding to remove practical
barriers when it is unreasonable to expect an employer to fund the
entirety of such costs. We also think it important as far as possible
to ensure that our approaches to the public and private sectors are
consistent. There are no plans at present to require the public sector,
through a specific duty, to report on its disability pay gap.
The public
sector equality duty will build on the existing disability equality
duty with a new specific one, underpinned by greater use of evidence
and more consultation, and the involvement of those who will benefit
from such a specific duty. There will be transparency and strong
leadership from the public bodies to which we have given the task.
Progress in securing improved outcomes for disabled people in the
labour market is being made through the Bill, and it will be further
enhanced across the private and public sectors. We are satisfied that
that is where our focus should be, and I therefore invite the hon.
Gentleman not to press the new clause to a Division.
We had quite
a bit of the stand part debate this morning, so I shall just add some
specifics and make some general remarks about the ludicrous assertions
on how much it is likely to cost to present data that are already
available in businesses. Various references have been made to the
burdens on business—Tories talk about those all the
time—and the extra pressure of the recession. I want to make it
clear that for this Government, equalities are not just for the good
times; they are for the bad times too. As it happens, 2013 is some time
away, and we hope to be well through the recession before any such
measure is
compulsory.
5
pm We
acknowledge that some employers who are only just above the threshold
of 250 employees might need to make adjustments, but the EHRC exists
specifically to provide support in exactly such cases. We think that
employers will meet their reporting obligations in the event that the
power needs to be used in 2013, and there will be sanctions to follow
if they do not. It is a long distance away, but it is none the less
necessary to mention that there will be civil and possibly criminal
sanctions for breach in due course if we cannot make voluntary
arrangements. However, no criminal sanction is expected to entail a
fine of more than £5,000. Contrary to what the Tories are
suggesting in seeing obstacles all over the place, we hope that
business understands better than it does that equality and business
progress go
together. The
hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare talked about equal pay being a good
news story, but if we continue to progress in eroding inequality at our
current rate—to use a calculation that I made for a different
debate not very long ago—it will not be my daughter, my
granddaughter or my great-granddaughter but my
great-great-granddaughter who has a hope of equal pay with men. That
simply will not do. He is pleased to say that on one measure, under-33s
receive equal pay, but he
must look at the real position. For a short period,
single young women and single young men might have equal pay, although
there is a good deal of evidence that within 12 months of graduation,
women earn less than men, even in the same fields. The position
is not as clear as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but all manner of
things have an impact, notably the ghettoisation of women’s work
into caring, cashiering, catering, cleaning and clerical—the
well-known five Cs—which are dominated by women, dominate the
available employment for women and are low-status and low-paid. The
availability of good-quality part-time work is limited, and it is
unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman chose to leave out the part-time
figure from all that he quoted about the progress that we have made,
because it is a major factor.
It is not a
surprise to the world that women have children, stop working to look
after them and then want to come back part-time, so why is it
acceptable for part-time work to be low paid? It is not, which is why
we will create transparency, find out where that low pay is and get rid
of it so that women are not penalised. Many of those women, of course,
are single parents, as 90 per cent. of single parents are women. They
will not be penalised. We will bring the matter out.
The hon.
Gentleman’s proportionality argument does not work. We are not
talking about a small, defined amount of discrimination. We simply do
not know what the discrimination element is, but it is considerably
bigger than the figures that he quoted, as I know from my 30
years’ experience in the field and from the Fawcett Society and
all the other contributors, who are not happy with the attempt to
minimise its role. If a single parent suffers only £1 less pay
per hour than a man, she is suffering grievous inequality, which is
likely to have a knock-on effect on her lifestyle and those of her
children. That is not something that lends itself to being assuaged
gently by proposals without any teeth. It must be stopped, and it must
be stopped
now. The
hon. Gentleman said that we could perhaps stop half of unequal pay if
we had child care. Working that out would need a complicated formula,
but he just plucked the figure from thin air. The Tories have no
particular policies to enhance child care. When it comes to sharing
care between fathers and mothers in order, perhaps, to free more women
for work, we find that the only Tory proposals are unfinanced.
Consequently, it will always be the lower paid who look after the
children, and there will not be the pressure that there ought to be to
increase female pay. He has no answers to unequal pay, whether or not
it comes from discrimination. He is opposed to trying to get rid of
discriminatory equal pay. On what basis exactly? Because he says that
our figures on the cost are “not worth the paper they are
written on.” Of course, he has no figure to put in their place.
He has nothing except his belief. Lots of people believe in fairies at
the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence of that, but there is
evidence in our impact assessment of the exact
cost.
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