Following the announcement of mandatory pay gap reporting for large employers, the government has issued a consultation document to bring in similar reporting requirements for large public sector employers.
Currently public bodies and those carrying out public functions are subject to the public sector equality duty (PSED) which means they have to consider equality when making day-to-day decisions both in terms of service delivery and employment. This consists of a general duty and specific duties which require public bodies to publish information annually showing that they are complying with the PSED. In addition, every four years they have to set and publish equality duties.
The government intends to amend the regulations covering specific duties in England to include a mandatory requirement for public bodies that are subject to these regulations, with 250 or more employees, to undertake gender pay gap (GPG) reporting. Although many public bodies may already be collating and publishing this information under the existing regulations, the government argues that introducing a mandatory requirement will ensure that GPG data will be available for all larger public sector employers.
As with private and voluntary sector organisations, public bodies will be required to publish data on their mean and median gender pay gap, mean and median bonus pay gap, and information on the proportions of male and female employees in each salary quartile.
Public authorities with 150 or more employees will still be required to report on the diversity of their workforce and consider whether to include data on gender pay differences in the information that they publish. The mandatory GPG reporting requirements will be added as an additional requirement for those bodies with 250 or more employees.
The government intends to introduce the amended regulations by the end of 2016 and, if agreed by Parliament, commence them as soon as possible afterwards. Public bodies covered by the regulations will be expected to capture their first set of GPG data in April 2017 and publish the information before April 2018, in line with the requirements for private and voluntary sector organisations.
Iain Birrell, from Thompsons Solicitors, said: “Despite the introduction of equal pay legislation in 1970 women still earn 18% less than men on average, and the gap balloons after women have children. The gap between the hourly pay of higher-educated men and women has not closed at all in the last 20 years. Mandatory pay gap reporting will require the publication of the overall mean and median gender pay gaps, but whilst this might produce some public pressure to equalize pay, it is insufficiently detailed for the individual enforcement that is required under UK law.
“There was a mechanism for getting the detail (the equal pay questionnaire) but the coalition government abolished that in 2014. The Employment Tribunals also had a power to recommend wider changes to fix structural workplace discrimination but the government abolished that in 2015. The number of equal pay claims brought at tribunal fell 75% when the government introduced fees in 2013. Although we cautiously welcome the new reporting requirements, we will need convincing that this is more than just shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic.”
The closing date for submitting a response to the consultation is 30 September 2016.
To access the consultation document, go to: https://consult.education.gov.uk/equality-framwork-team/gender-pay-gap-reporting-public-sector/supporting_documents/17.08.2016%20Public%20sector%20GPG%20consultation_accessible%20FIN.pdf