Equal Pay and Flexible Working Bill [HL]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, on introducing the Bill. I also congratulate all her Conservative female companions who did all the footwork in gathering the statistics to back it. The Bill may not be perfect—indeed the noble Baroness admitted as much—but, above all, it keeps the issue of equal pay for men and women, and flexible working, firmly in the public eye. Certainly there is a need for all employers, not least at this time of critical economic uncertainty, to keep both issues high on their priority agenda. Progress towards equal pay for work of equal value for full-time employees has undoubtedly been appallingly slow, given that the Equal Pay Act was passed nearly 40 years ago in 1970. The 2008 figures show that the gap has increased slightly this year—we have already heard that from the noble Baroness. However, given that the UK was among the first nations to introduce equal opportunity laws, it would be interesting to know where we stand in the world league table on progress towards equal pay. Perhaps the Minister may answer that. However, even more worrying is the pay gap for part-time workers, which stands at as high as 36.3 per cent. As noble Lords will know, the majority of part-time workers are women, mainly due to family responsibilities. Today, no fewer than 45 per cent of all women employees work part-time, despite the fact that more fathers are beginning to take some share of family responsibilities. On the equal pay front, the Bill, as I understand it, will only require companies that have been found by a court or tribunal to be in breach of the Act to undertake a company-wide equality audit. I, too, have read what the CBI and others have said, and there are some reservations. We must pay particular attention to the problems of SMEs; perhaps that can be looked at later. However, there are, surely, substantial benefits. The Bill would certainly simplify the whole process and cost taxpayers less, as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said. It was my experience as the first deputy chairman of the EOC that, once a clearer legal requirement was in force, companies made far more effort to obey it. However, I want to concentrate on the flexible working aspects of this Bill. The younger generation of company executives know that it is in their own and their companies’ best interests if they can hold on to the talent that they have recruited and trained, but there are still too many employers of the old school who have not realised how expensive it is to keep on recruiting, retraining and churning employees, rather than investing further in those that they have already spent money on. This Government have done a great deal to promote a better work/life balance, and I congratulate them on the initiatives they have taken, even if those initiatives have not always delivered as fully as other noble Lords and I would have hoped. More nursery provision is not enough. Encouragement of flexible working allows many more mothers to combine caring for their children. We also know that often they may be caring for their own ageing or disabled family members. Flexible working helps women not only to continue in employment but, of course, to contribute to a retirement pension. The Government’s recent Pensions Act—for which congratulations are also due—has helped considerably with its better pension opportunities for women, and particularly the extra buy-back options which enable those who qualify to purchase a higher pension. It is no longer acceptable for there to be a 40 per cent gap, which still exists, between men’s and women’s pensions, nor is it even remotely acceptable that women’s potential remains undeveloped, when competition in today’s global market requires employment of the nation’s best talents, whether they are in men or women. Women will continue to be the majority of those who live in poverty at the end of their lives, unless more drastic action is taken to make flexible working at relevant times of their lives the norm for both sexes. I thoroughly underline what the noble Baroness said about both sexes. There is clear evidence, too, that more fathers want to take a more active and responsible role in bringing up their children. Yet, although some 14 million employees now work flexibly, the vast majority are still women. Some months ago an Oral Question was asked about how many women had used the right to request flexible working under recent European and domestic laws and to how many women it had been granted. The answer for women was quite encouraging, given that we were at the start of the process. Yet, when I followed with a supplementary question, asking how many men had asked for and been granted the same flexibility, the Minister who replied had not even been briefed on that. Research shows a positive relationship between flexible working, lower stress and improved health and well-being, and there are many varied ways in which flexible working can be achieved—working term-time only, working from home or job sharing, for example. Almost invariably, the employer gets value for money. The Cranfield School of Management is quoted by Working Families as having demonstrated that the cost to employers of making such adjustments was £68 million, while the benefits from higher productivity, lower turnover and reduced absenteeism were £91 million. All that this Bill proposes is an extension of the hours already available from April of this year for 16 to 18 year-olds, by sensibly anticipating the raising of the school-leaving age in a year or two to the same level. The Bill would also bring some uniformity to other groups that need the same ability to combine employment with caring—those caring for children with disabilities or special learning needs, and disabled adults. Carers play a vital role and save the state huge sums. We also know that there is high support for this right to be extended to all employees. I hope that the Bill’s proposals will be a firm step in that direction. It already happens in Holland and Germany, where employees have the right to request flexible working from all employers. We also know from research that 58 per cent of men and 63 per cent of women in this country support the move for this right to be available to all employees. I end by stressing that given the horrendous economic situation and considerable job losses already being recorded throughout the economy, there are forecasts that women will be the first and the most to suffer and lose their jobs. Yet a wider ability to request flexible working would be invaluable to women, as well as a valuable tool for employers to help them keep their companies and their employees in work. I wish the Bill well and, again, I congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing it.