Equality Bill

The Solicitor-General is right that I have been focusing on direct discrimination up until now, and it is absolutely true that there are many other issues that responsible employers are already addressing and will need to continue to address. It is pretty unnecessary to have a gender pay reporting requirement to work out that every person in a particular department is a woman or that they are grossly over-represented in a particular department. One only has to walk into a department and look around to see that. It is also true that the measures required to deal with some of the examples that the hon. and learned Lady gave, such as ghettoisation, are different. Such problems may require mentoring or help with career development, for example, which are the kinds of things that we addressed briefly in our discussion about positive action. Many employers are now undertaking such actions in an attempt to increase the proportion of women whom they first recruit and retain, and then help to progress throughout their organisations. I hope that I am not barking up the wrong tree, because I think that those things are important. I was just seeking to get an estimate of the size of the opportunity that we are talking about. However, there is agreement on the fact that it would none the less be worth while going ahead with a gender pay reporting requirement, even if we were talking about only a couple of percentage points of the pay differential. It would also be worth doing if the costs were proportionate. We are talking about a pernicious problem and an injustice that needs to be dealt with. Providing that we can deal with it in a way that is proportionate and sensible, we should get on and do so.