The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee has published a report on gender pay gap reporting.
The report finds that the UK has one of the highest gender pay gaps in Europe and makes several recommendations, including that:
- The Government widen the net of organisations required to publish gender pay gap data to those with over 50 employees (from the current 250) from 2020;
- Organisations should be required to publish, alongside the figures, an explanation of any gender pay gap and an action plan for closing the gap, against which they must report progress each year, as part of normal reporting requirements;
- The Government should clarify how data on partner pay should be calculated and included in time for the publication of data next year (2019);
- The Government alter the reporting requirements and improve the quality of the guidance on how to calculate the figures;
- The Government must clarify the legal sanctions available to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to purse those failing to comply.
The report calls for the Government to be more ambitious by enhancing requirements to publish more detailed statistics and for organisations to provide explanations of what they are doing to tackle their gender pay gaps.