Equality Bill

I was going to make the point that I would like further consideration of certain issues. They include some of the proposals put forward by Unison, working jointly with the Fawcett Society. The proposals were also in the report on equal pay produced by the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee. I hope that the issue will be considered again. We could not agree in the Committee on whether we should go forward with compulsory pay audits. However, we did say that if in future there was still limited progress on eliminating the gap, we should consider either introducing compulsory pay audits or imposing the equality duty on the private as well as the public sector. I hope that the Government will return to and reconsider representative actions and hypothetical comparators. I argued for hypothetical comparators when we were introducing the provisions on part-time workers. I am conscious that the Conservative Opposition are still saying that even rather mild "We will do something in future if we don't get anywhere" proposals are regarded, for some reason, as a terrible burden on business. Are they saying now that introducing the minimum wage or the right to flexible working was a burden on business? They have come around to those measures, and I have every hope that there will be the same volte face and Damascene conversion and that they will support us on these proposals as well. I welcome the Bill, but I hope that we will look at further ways of improving it as it makes its progress through Parliament.