Equality Bill

Yes, that is a massive problem for local government and throughout the national health service and all parts of the public sector. As I said, at least there has been an attempt to grapple with the problems since 1997, with all their complexities and difficulties. Unfortunately, that cannot be said to the same extent of the private sector, in which about 80 per cent. of employees work. Gender discrimination is an even more difficult problem in that sector, and it is even more difficult to bring equal value cases because of the lack of transparency. When I took equal value cases in the health service, we knew what a cleaner was paid, and we also knew what the wall washer, who was a man, was being paid. He was paid more, even though he was washing the wall and the women were washing the floor. We were therefore able to put a case together. That is not the situation in the private sector, because there is no transparency and different people doing the same job are on very different terms and conditions of employment. That makes it even more difficult to achieve any kind of equality, because people do not know what is going on round about them. They get information accidentally and anecdotally, and it may or may not be correct. They could therefore be well into an equal value case before they knew what the ball game is and what they were being paid in comparison with others. I welcome clause 75, which opens the way for a more mandatory approach in that it gives Ministers a power to make regulations to require employers with 250 or more employees to publish information. However, a voluntary approach has not worked over the past 40 years, so I find it difficult to believe that there is going to be significant movement in the next four years, in which time the Government say they hope there will be an improvement in the situation. They have said that they do not intend to use the power until 2013, and I hope they will revisit that mandatory aspect. The figure of 250 employees will simply exclude considerable numbers of people who could benefit from the Bill, so I welcome proposed new clause 3, which was tabled a considerable time ago by the Liberal Democrats. It would be a significant improvement, but my concern is that it would still exclude many people who could be helped by this legislation. As I understand it, the measure was drafted in line with the equal pay task force recommendations, which were published in 2001. That authoritative report, which was commissioned by the Equal Opportunities Commission, has already been quoted in our debate. The reality, however, is that even if new clause 33, which would introduce a threshold of 21 employees, were successful, 32 per cent. of women would be excluded, because they are employed in organisations with 20 or fewer employees. Only 68 per cent. of women and a slightly higher number of men would be in organisations that had to make such information available. The figure of 21 employees was chosen simply because it fits in with the Government's approach to other legislation, such as trade union recognition, and not for any other reason. There is a very strong argument that there should be no threshold at all, because this form of transparency is easier the smaller the organisation. However, we took the view that some people would feel able to support a threshold in the region of 21, but would not support no threshold whatever. I believe that mandatory pay auditing legislation would help significant numbers of men and women in this country—of course, not only women take equal pay cases, but men too, and they do so successfully. However, the vast majority of people who are discriminated against in their pay on the ground of gender tend to be women, so women will be the major benefactors of successful legislation. This is an important issue for our party in Government, and I very much hope that the Government will feel able to look at it again. They will be very well aware that many Labour MPs are very sympathetic and supportive of proposed new clause 33 as I suspect, are many Ministers who have been involved in the Bill.