On 2 August 2018, the House of Commons' Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee published a report on gender pay gap reporting. The report states that the U.K. has one of the highest gender pay gaps in Europe, which is a major contributory factor to the continuing failure to fully utilise the talents of women.
The report is the result of an inquiry into executive pay and the gender pay gap in the private sector, launched by the Committee on 23 March 2018 and the introduction of new reporting requirements obliging employers with at least 250 employees to publish their first gender pay gap report by 4 April 2018. The launch of the enquiry was discussed in the April 2018 edition of this newsletter.
The report notes that, business by business, men dominate both the highest paid sectors of the economy and the highest paid occupations within each sector. While median pay across the economy is 18% in favour of men, gender pay gaps over 40% are not uncommon in certain sectors and approximately 78% of organisations report gender pay gaps in favour of men.
In recognition that the pay gap is higher in smaller businesses, the report calls on the Government to widen the net of organisations caught by the reporting requirements and to require organisations with over 50 employees to publish gender pay gap information.
Further, the report also recommends that organisations be required by the Government to publish alongside any gender pay gap report, an explanation of any gender pay gap together with an action plan for closing the gap, against which they should report progress each year as part of normal reporting requirements.
Finally, the report also finds that the Government failed to clarify the legal sanctions available to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sanction those who fail to comply with reporting requirements and recommends that this error be rectified.
The full report can be found here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmbeis/928/928.pdf The associated press release can be found here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-energy-industrial-strategy/news-parliament-2017/gender-pay-gap-report-published-17-19/
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