Sarah Champion: Labour led the way on equal pay – but it has taken the Tories seven years to even make a start

IT has been almost 50 years since the women sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant downed tools and demanded what was rightfully theirs – equal pay for a hard day’s work, equivalent to their male colleagues.

Yet successive parliaments have failed to deliver on that demand.

It is extraordinary that pay inequality – being paid less as a woman for doing work which is of equal value and demands equal skill – is still a factor for women across the UK, despite being illegal. Recent cases taken against Birmingham council, and the on-going case against Asda, demonstrate that clearly.

We know the situation is more complicated and even harder to tackle than simply companies acting in breach of the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

Ingrained discrimination, the under-valuing of roles done by women, the dominance of men in the best paid positions, unequal caring responsibilities and so on have created a gender pay gap that currently stands at 18 per cent.

That’s why the last Labour government – spearheaded by the visionary work of Harriet Harman – included practical action to tackle the gender pay gap in the ground-breaking Equality Act 2010.

The Equality Act 2010 introduced mandatory pay audits, under which companies that employ more than 250 people have to publish details of their male and female staff’s pay. Labour knew then, as we know now, that transparency will push companies to focus on the reasons why the pay gap still exists and highlight clearly to government where changes are necessary.

Yet it has taken nearly seven years, after pressure from Labour, amendments to the Serious Crime Bill and a ten minute rule bill that I tabled, for the Tories to bring into force this simple piece of legislation that Labour introduced in 2010.

Employers will report their pay gap in four bands, so we are able to evaluate how it differs across an organisation, and across levels of seniority. The regulations will help to cast a light over the consequences of a segregated workplace.

However, these regulations are bereft of some of the basic powers that would actually assure a benefit for women. The government have chosen to omit any enforcement provisions or sanctions for non-compliance or for employers who publish inaccurate or misleading reports.

They are instead relying on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to use its existing powers. Except the EHRC has stated that they do not have the existing powers or resources to do so. This should come as no surprise to us, when we consider the enormous budget cuts pushed on the EHRC by the current and previous Tory and coalition governments.

How does this government expect to tackle the gender pay gap, when the regulations can’t be meaningfully enforced?

The government has stated that it will run checks to assess non-compliance. Yet they have no plans to report to parliament or to publish an annual league table – or even compile a public database of compliant employers.

In addition, the government has made no commitment to actually respond to the findings of employers’ reporting or bring an action plan to narrow the gap.

The government is failing women and failing companies who are already living up to their duty as a responsible employer.

This is a half-hearted attempt at tackling the gap. They’ve watered the regulations down so much that I have to question their commitment to tackling the gender pay gap.

Almost every major piece of legislation that has improved the lives of working women has been introduced by a Labour government. All this current government had to do on mandatory reporting of the gap was enforce our legislation and create a meaningful mechanism for tackling pay inequality. Even on that they’ve failed.

Sarah Champion is MP for Rotherham and shadow secretary of state for women and equalities.