BEIS Committee report on gender pay gap reporting

On 2 August 2018, the House of Commons' Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee published a report on gender pay gap reporting. The report is the first output of the Committee's inquiry into aspects of executive pay and the gender pay gap in the private sector, which was launched in March 2018.

The report finds that while the gender pay gap median is around 18% nationally, in some organisations the gap is as wide as 40%. It calls for more to be done, and more quickly, to close the gender pay gap. It makes a number of recommendations for strengthening gender pay gap reporting and for closing the gap:

•    Reporting obligations to extend to companies with 50 or more employees from 2020 (currently it only applies to companies with 250 or more).
•    Reporting to include a narrative explanation for pay disparity, and to be accompanied by an action plan to tackle the gender pay gap (currently such reporting is optional, not mandatory).
•    The regulations on gender pay reporting to be amended so that partner remuneration is included in the figures.
•    The regulations on gender pay reporting to be amended so that the current requirement to report on salary quartiles should be changed to deciles (in effect allowing for a more nuanced analysis).
•    The government to clarify current areas of ambiguity and publish revised guidance dealing with ambiguous areas, for example on how bonus figures should be calculated.
•    Giving the Equalities and Human Rights Commission specific enforcement powers, to levy fines for non-compliance.

Finally, the report makes recommendations for company boards, investors and regulators to drive change in tackling the gender pay gap.

Meanwhile, the Government Equalities Office (GEO) has published guidance, "What Works", which contains evidence-based recommendations on closing the gender pay gap. The GEO has also revealed that all 10,000 employers in scope of the reporting obligations have published their data.