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Equality Bill

My Lords, I speak to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Lester of Herne Hill, Lady Northover, and myself. I share the outrage expressed from the Opposition Dispatch Box by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about the fact that after more than a generation since the Equal Pay Act 1970, there are still, as the Office for National Statistics has shown, huge disparities in pay between men and women. I find it difficult that having highlighted this, the noble Baroness wishes to replace what we on these Benches would argue is an already insufficient Government response with an even less sufficient and even weaker response from the Official Opposition. The Conservative Party appears to be locking the stable door after the horse has bolted—you have to be found guilty of pay discrimination before an audit would be visited upon you. We do not believe that this kind of "stick", or punishment-based approach, is the best way of dealing with this. We believe that the Government and the Conservative Party should ask—as we do—what, after all these years, this Parliament can do to end the discrimination in pay between men and women which still exists. We regret that the provisions which the Government have brought forward do not adequately answer that question. For a start, the scheme will be voluntary, whereas our amendments would make it mandatory. We are led to understand that the Government will exercise the powers which they are taking under Clause 78 only if there is an insufficient voluntary publication by employers by 2013—some three years away. That means another three years of allowing a situation to carry on which for the past 40 years has not answered the question. One wonders why they believe that in the next three years the gap will be closed, when the experience of the past 40 years would suggest otherwise. We also take exception to the proposed limit of 250 employees. We put it at 100 and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, wondered why. We regularly hear concerns about the imposition of too many burdens on much smaller businesses. We also believe that if you require private sector employers with at least 100 employees to publish information about differences in pay between their male and female employees, this should identify discriminatory differences in pay and therefore encourage employers to eliminate sex discrimination in pay. They should know what their pay systems are. By the time you get up to a higher number of employees, that detailed level of discrimination in the system may not necessarily have been identified. They may think that they are good employers in terms of addressing issues of sex discrimination, whereas an audit might well prove that they are not. If it shows that particular pay systems are adversely impacting on their women employees, then through negotiation or otherwise, they would be expected to address the situation. We are as a nation going through difficult times economically—there is no denying that. However, that should not be an excuse for companies in this country to exploit women as a source of cheap labour. I do not believe that anybody in this House believes that that should happen either. That is why it is important that we try to find a way to address the issue more immediately and effectively. We believe that our amendments will provide an answer. I do not suggest that it is the whole answer, but they make a more immediate attempt to address the question of why, after all these years, we have not eliminated the pay gap. I encourage the Government to go down the road which we are adopting, because it is more likely to produce answers sooner rather than later. After all, we have waited far too long already.