My evidence to Treasury Committee on effectiveness of Gender Pay Gap Reporting

On June 5th 2019, I had the privilege of being able to talk to the Treasury Select Committee about the “Effectiveness of Gender Pay Gap Reporting“. My name was put forward by the Royal Statistical Society and we spent an hour discussing a number of issues with a particular focus on the Finance sector.

The session was split into two panels and I was in the first panel where I was joined by Sarah Gordon, the former Business Editor of the Financial Times. The second panel had two representatives of the Government Equality Office (GEO), Hillary Spencer and Elysia McCaffrey.

The MPs asking questions were:-

Nicky Morgan, Conservative MP for Loughborough and Chair of the committee
John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw
Alison McGovern, Labour MP for Wirral South
Catherine McKinnell, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne North
Hosie Stewart, SNP MP for Dundee East who arrived for the second panel and therefore did not ask me any questions

I was wearing two hats in this session. The first as myself as someone with extensive experience of working with, explaining statistical ideas to and providing training for non-statisticians. Given that Gender Pay Gap Reporting is a statistical exercise to be undertaken by mostly HR professionals with no statistical background, I felt I had something to give the committee with this perspective. The second hat was as a contributing author to the “10 Recommendations for Improving Gender Pay Gap Reporting” document published by the Royal Statistical Society in April and I am grateful that the RSS were willing to allow me to speak in their name.

Looking back, I was helped by a good briefing by the committee clerk. As a result, I wasn’t caught out by any of the questions and I felt I managed to convey some key points I wanted to get across. All in all, it was a very interesting experience and I hope the committee found my comments useful.

Click here to watch the full session. My part with Sarah Gordon lasts just over an hour. If you prefer, you can read the transcript instead.

See my answers to specific questions

If you would like to skip to my answers for specific questions, here is the full list of questions asked. Italicised questions not inside quotes are paraphrasings of the actual question otherwise the question is a copy and paste from the transcript. The numbers in square brackets at the front give the timestamps of these clips so that you can find them in the full session link above instead. The italicised numbers in curly brackets at the end is the length of the clip. All are in [HH:MM:SS] format.

If I was the first to answer the question, then clicking the link will give you both the question and the answer. If Sarah answered the question first, then the link shows my answer only so to hear the question itself, click on the question timestamp as well.

[09:40:04] Nicky Morgan “Is there a gender pay gap and what are we learning from the figures at the moment?” {00:02:40}
[09:42:55] Nicky Morgan “Should the threshold for reporting be lowered from 250 employees to 50, say?” {00:02:48}
[09:48:30] John Mann “Does a company have any discretion in how it makes its calculations for gender pay gap?” {00:01:30}
[09:50:05] John Mann “How are part-time workers calculated?” {00:00:44}
[09:50:49] John Mann “Do either of you have any suggestions for us on how the method of calculating could be improved?” {00:04:23}
[10:04:29] Alison McGovern “Would either of you like to make any initial comment specifically on the world of finance in relation to the gender pay gap?” {00:04:10} & additional response regarding SIC code errors {00:01:52}
[10:13:52] Alison McGovern “Do both of you think that the information provided by financial firms is accessible to a layperson?” {00:02:20}
[10:26:08] Catherine McKinnell – Are you concerned about the lack of an enforcement mechanism? {00:05:35} clip includes a follow up question on transparency and use of data
[10:36:10] Nicky Morgan – Should the government require ethnicity pay gap reporting? {00:03:10}

– Need help with interpreting your gender pay gap? –

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– Want to know more about the gender pay gap? –

I have written a number of articles about the gender pay gap covering these topics:-

Finally visit my Twitter thread to see my comments on gender pay gaps in the media. Some notable ones are here.