Stephen Kerr
Main Page: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)Department Debates - View all Stephen Kerr's debates with the Home Office
(6 years ago)
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Victoria Atkins
As I said, the EHRC has set out its action plan, because it rightly has responsibility for enforcement after the deadline. It wrote to all the companies that had not complied on Monday 9 April. Since that date, more companies have complied. Let us not forget that it is not necessarily a question of businesses saying, “We have 250 or more employees—this is our gender pay gap.” Some of them will fall just shy of the threshold and so may declare themselves as not meeting the criteria. However, since that letter has gone out, their numbers may have gone up. We are reviewing this very carefully, and the EHRC has set out what it plans to do over the next 28 days in reviewing companies that have not complied and what it will do thereafter.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
Would it not further focus minds if companies were required to provide an action statement along with the numbers that are being reported?
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend highlights a point that has been raised before. At this stage, we are saying that it is best practice. The advantage of that, I hope, is that we bring businesses with us. In fairness, the vast majority of businesses want to do this. Let us not pretend that those in the corporate sector in the UK are against doing it—they are not. Indeed, the fact that the vast majority of them reported on time—indeed, some of them reported way ahead of time—suggests that they want to do it. That is because businesses know, as McKinsey’s most recent report showed, that if we sort out the gender gap, it has the potential to add £150 billion to our economy. That is a figure that we, and companies, are most interested in.