On 17 January 2019, the government’s response to the Committee’s report on strengthening gender pay gap reporting was published. The report itself was published on 2 August 2018
There will be no immediate changes to the gender pay gap reporting regime, though its limitations have been acknowledged.
the response states that:
- The gender pay gap reporting obligations will not be extended to companies with 50 or more employees, but it will encourage smaller companies to look at their gender pay gaps . This may be revisited in future.
- Partner remuneration will remain excluded from the reporting regime.
- The government will not amend the regulations to require a more detailed analysis of gender pay gap figures, for example introducing a requirement to show part-time and full-time gender pay gap statistics separately.
- ACAS guidance in this area will not be revised.
In conclusion therefore it seems that the update is that there is no real update or further progress in this area.
Personally I find this disappointing given that the system is not all inclusive and leaves a vast number of medium and small businesses without any requirement to report. The voluntary reporting scheme demonstrated that without any clear obligation in this area very few companies will voluntarily disclose any issues around pay.
Given the number of employees engaged by these businesses who are missing any statistics based on the current regime I suspect we have a long way to go before real pay equality will be achieved across all sectors