Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the report entitled DCMS gender pay gap 2017/18, published on gov.uk on 19 December 2018, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the rise in the median measure for the difference in hourly rate between male and female civil servants between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.

Machinery of Government change in July 2017, through which we took on responsibility for digital policy, marked the start of a period of significant growth for the Department. The changes to workforce structure that resulted from this growth have caused our median gender pay gap to increase, although our individual mean and median gaps for grades D - A (see attached table) indicate that DCMS employees are paid equally for work of equal responsibility. We are committed to reducing our gender pay gap and are taking action to target the causes of our increased median gap.