One in 10 employers that should have reported on their gender pay gap have yet to do so, a fortnight after the cutoff date for the first such pay audit.
Although more companies have reported since 4 April, the official closing date by when employers with more than 250 employees had to submit their data, 1,500 are still outstanding. The figures showed eight out of 10 employers pay men more than women.
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcing the law. But in the Commons, opposition MPs challenged the government over cuts to the EHRC’s funding and questioned its capacity to enforce the law.
Dawn Butler, the shadow equalities minister, called on ministers to review the cuts. Setting out five further actions that should follow mandatory audits, she wanted certification of compulsory action plans to close the gap and monitoring of their implementation. She also called for the burden of proof of equal pay to fall on employers rather than employees having to prove unequal pay.
“The EHRC needs more resources – 70% of cuts will jeopardise their ability to enforce sanctions. The government needs to review the cuts they have currently levied,” she said.
Harriet Harman said the audit – introduced under the last Labour government but brought into force only two years ago – had “laid bare” what women always knew but could not prove, that men were paid more across every sector.
“In particular in the retail section which would not exist without women’s work. Why on earth at Tesco should women on the checkout earn £8 while men in the stores earn up to £11.50 an hour?” she said.
Harman, a Labour MP who has campaigned for gender equality since she became an MP in 1982, added: “And it pains me to say, this but the unions need to get their house in order. How can women in Unite trust their union to champion equal pay if there’s a 30% pay gap itself in the union.”
The Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson told MPs that as a coalition minister she had to fight with Downing Street to get the act, which was introduced under Labour but brought into force by the coalition, into force.
“The visibility and transparency of hard numbers helps to pierce the bubble of complacency in boardrooms and newsrooms and in our living rooms.”
But she added that the pay gap was only the start of a much more complex story and she questioned whether the government had a plan to tackle job segregation, or the “dis-benefit” of motherhood.
“The government’s lack of appetite for concrete action is palpable,” she said afterwards. “They drafted the regulations to exclude the sanction of fines for non-compliance and no action plans were required from employers.” She also highlighted the failure of the government to act on the thousands of employers who force pregnant women out of their jobs.
