Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, with reference to the Guardian article of 28 February 2019 entitled Lack of sanctions makes a mockery of gender pay gap reports, if she will make an estimate of the number of companies that have provided mathematically impossible figures for gender pay gap data for (a) 2017-18 and (b) 2018-19.

100% of employers believed to be in scope of the regulations reported their figures by August 2018.

It is an employer’s legal responsibility to ensure that they report on time and that their figures are accurate. The vast majority of the over 10,500 that reported last year have completed the calculations correctly. In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) commenced enforcement action against 100 employers suspected of publishing inaccurate gender pay gap figures.

The EHRC enforcement found that they were a result of errors, rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead. They have worked closely with employers to identify and correct errors - all of whom have now either verified their figures or identified and corrected calculation errors.

Employers have until 30 March, for the public sector, and 4 April, for the private and voluntary sector, to submit their data for the second year. The data for the 2018-19 reporting year will be reviewed once the deadline has passed.