The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Committee has today published the Government
response to the Committee’s report on the
Gender Pay gap.
The BEIS Committee’s report was published on 2 August and called
for a widening of the net of companies required to report and for
companies to be required to publish action plans and narrative
reports on what they are doing to close the gap. A full list of
the report’s recommendations are available here. The Government
response is attached.
Commenting on the Government response, MP, Chair of the BEIS
Committee, said: “Next year is the 50th anniversary of
the Equal Pay Act, and yet still we are tackling issues around
fairness in pay. The UK has one of the highest gender
pay gaps in Europe. Pay reporting can only be the first step in
closing this gap and moving towards genuine equality and
diversity in the workplace. The Government’s refusal to extend
gender pay gap reporting requirements to partners is
disappointing and continues to make a nonsense of efforts to
understand the true scale of, and the reasons behind, the gender
pay gap in some companies. Failing to accept our report’s
recommendation to require businesses to publish an action plan
for closing the gap, against which they must report progress each
year, suggests the Government are timid in holding businesses to
account for their efforts in driving the change needed”.