BUSINESS department under-secretary Paul Scully said the government was “committed to taking action on ethnicity pay reporting”.
However, the Conservative MP said establishing a standard ethnicity pay reporting framework would be more challenging than in the case of gender pay gap disclosure.
“But we want to ensure we are doing the right things to genuinely help move things forward,” Scully said in response to MPs’ demand to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory for employers.
As the House of Commons debated the matter, several parliamentarians felt that businesses would not make progress in closing pay gaps without a legal obligation to make disclosures.
Scottish National Party MP Steven Bonnar said mandatory ethnicity pay reporting would be “the most transformative steps a company could take to address racial inequality at work and overcome practical difficulties in the workplace.”
The debate followed a petition seeking mandatory pay gap reporting which received more than 130,000 signatures, amid reports of slow progress by large employers to come out with data on pay disparities between white British workers and their ethnic minority colleagues.
In the lead-up to the debate, the government said it held consultations from October 2018 to January 2019 on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay reporting.
“We are currently analysing these and will respond by the end of the year,” it said.
Forsyth was awarded a CBE for services to literature in 1997Getty Images
