Wed 14 Feb 2018, 15:53 PM | Posted by editor
The Tory Government’s commitment to equal pay for women is only for show. It is now legally mandatory for any firm employing more than 250 people to report its gender pay differential and to publish a plan disclosing how it intends to close the gaps between men and women. However, the Tories have ensured that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is charged with enforcing this law, is completely underfunded and toothless. In other words, there is no serious effort to change anything.
The EHRC has received no additional funding whatsoever for this allegedly important monitoring and enforcement role. Since the EHRC was created in 2007, by the merging of the three bodies responsible for disability rights, racial equality and equal opportunities, its budget has been slashed. Between 2007 and 2016 it lost 70 per cent of its budget, followed by a further 25 per cent in the 2016-20 spending review.
The head of the EHRC is virtually compliant in this disgraceful underfunding, having timidly ‘asked’ the government for the cost of five more staff members and one additional legal counsel to monitor the new equal pay enforcement.
As a result of this under-investment, companies are point-blank refusing to comply with their legal obligations…and there is no intention of doing anything about it. The deadline for big companies to report data is April 4th, yet thousands of companies have yet to file any data. Only 906 companies, out of an estimated 9000 who qualify, have reported on their gender pay data, and not all of them have included a ‘plan’ to change anything. According to the EHRC, “a significant proportion of those that have reported appear to have registered inaccurate data.” More than 130 companies, for example, have registered a median gender pay gap of zero and 50 have registered zero as their mean pay gap, both of which are statistically improbable. In other words, these big companies are taking the p**s.
Will the EHRC be taking vigorous steps to do something about this? Not likely. Rebecca Hilsenrath, whose job depends on staying in the Government’s good books, of course, is not in favour of “enforcement”. So when it comes to equal pay, women should not be relying on this Government. It may be run by a woman Prime Minister, but she’s a Tory Prime Minister and that’s the main point.
(Financial Times, February 14, 2018)
