Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the level of pay inequality between the highest and lowest paid employees in the higher education sector.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency publishes information on staff salaries in the higher education sector. The most recent publication can be found at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/dataand-analysis/publications/staff-2016-17. The government has made no estimate regarding the difference in earnings between the highest and lowest paid employees in the sector.

Higher education providers are autonomous and it is for them to set pay levels for their staff. Universities receive significant amounts of public funding, so it is only right that their senior staff pay arrangements command public confidence and deliver value for money for both students and taxpayers.

The government consulted on behalf of the Office for Students (OfS) on making arrangements for the publication of data on senior staff remuneration. From 2018 the OfS will require registered providers to disclose the relationship between the remuneration of the head of the provider and that of all other employees, expressed as a pay multiple. It will also require providers to publish the number of their staff paid more than £100,000 per annum, the total remuneration package of the head of the provider, and a justification for this remuneration package.