Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of gender pay gap reporting by larger companies on gender pay discrepancies since that measure was introduced in 2017.

This Government is committed to the empowerment of women in the workplace. Over the last decade our work has seen the gender pay gap fall considerably with the reporting regulations helping to motivate employers to improve equality in the workplace and strong growth in the number of women in full-time work.

To drive forward this progress we have recently announced a groundbreaking pay transparency pilot, a new STEM returners programme and a Taskforce on Women-Led High-Growth Enterprises.

We are required to carry out a review of the regulations after they’ve been in force for five years; as is the case for many other business regulations. This is being prepared and will fully consider all of the available evidence to assess whether the regulations are achieving their intended impact. It will be published in due course.