Dated: 24 April 2009
Following Harriet Harman’s comments on the likely content of the Government’s Equality Bill, the Institute of Directors (IoD) condemns proposals to introduce mandatory pay audits. Vast numbers of businesses already facing cash-flow; lending and demand-led pressures will be shocked to hear about this potentially damaging new business burden.
The IoD have long campaigned for the Government to reconsider their plans to introduce any form of statutory disclosure of gender pay disparities and felt that with the recent economic turmoil these damaging proposals had been shelved.
Commenting on the news that Harriet Harman’s department is adding a new business burden, Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors (IoD), said;
“This is a further example of unnecessary regulation at a time when companies, particularly SMEs, are struggling to survive.
“Having received written assurances from Ms Harman’s department that they had, and I quote; ‘ruled out mandatory gender pay audits’, I’m very disappointed to hear reports that this might now be going ahead.”
He added:
“Directors take the equality agenda extremely seriously and would have been happy to co-operate with a number of more constructive measures, but this is a retrograde step that will do little to tackle the discrimination problem.”
