Earlier this week I did a blog post for e-Politix.com:

Proof is in the pocket

Perhaps you have to be a solicitor to understand why it is necessary to rewrite the law to say the same thing. Working on the Equality Bill has been like a labyrinthine legislative version of spot-the-difference. On the one hand a myriad of regulations and legislation spanning 40 years, and on the other a new single tome – the Equality Bill.

To be fair, there are a few obvious differences – such as ending disparity of protections between different types of discrimination, most notably age. However, it will come as no surprise that, as a party with liberty and equality at the heart of our ideology, we wanted more than just a re-stating of existing law. Just tidying up the legislation implies that those who face discrimination are well enough protected. This could not be further from the truth, particularly when it comes to the workplace.

The flashing fluorescent elephant in the room when it comes to employment discrimination is of course equal pay for women. What the government is proposing is new, but not radical. The bill gives powers that require companies with over 250 employees to publish rudimentary information about the difference between what their male and female employees are paid.

When it comes to equal pay, equality campaigners could be forgiven for thinking they are stuck in a time-warp. Flash back to the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the government of the day imposed a time delay to allow businesses to comply. Forty years later, the government is giving businesses time to comply voluntarily with its pay gap publishing requirements. How much more time is needed, and more importantly, how much longer should women wait? My thinking is that they have waited long enough.

Good regulation must engage all stakeholders. Only through listening can government understand how to give the greatest effect to its intentions and to make sure any possible negative consequences are properly accounted for.

Businesses have legitimate concerns about how new equal pay requirements might affect them. In a time of recession when margins get even tighter, new regulations that impose compliance costs must be carefully considered and where possible mitigated against, for example by excluding smaller businesses.

My experience is that businesses are alive to the problem of unequal pay, but I am slightly more suspicious about how they think it should be solved. If the business lobby is to be believed, the pay gap is all the government’s fault, because of the poor quality of careers advice given to young women. Careers advisors telling girls to be hairdressers not bankers does not account for the systematic discrimination against women that sees them receive roughly 17 per cent less pay. If only the problem was that simple to solve.

The issue goes much deeper, to the core of business practice. It is about their policies, their culture – the whole way of doing business and how this impacts on employees both male and female. All too often equal pay is seen as just a women’s issue, but what about the business culture where it is frowned upon for a man to take emergency time off to look after a sick child who has been sent home from nursery. More often than not this duty seems to fall on the mother. The implications of this mentality will ripple throughout her career and will ultimately be reflected in her (and his) pay.

To tackle this we must expose the impact of such practices through revealing the true extent of pay disparity. The government’s pay gap information is a feeble, half-hearted measure that even businesses agree won’t do what it is designed to. A proper pay audit is when you get under the bonnet of a company and actually look at the nature of the jobs, comparing them and how they are paid. Government should support businesses in this process by making it as simple and as inexpensive to carry out as possible.

As the bill passes through Parliament, where the minutiae of the differences between old regulations and new law is raked over, I can’t help fearing an opportunity to tackle gender pay inequality head-on is being missed. I very much hope it is not another 40 years before this inequality affecting half the population is looked at again.