§ Mr. Craigenasked the Secretary of State for Employment what progress has been made towards the full implementation of the Equal Pay Act 1970; and what sectors of industry and commerce have yet to end discrimination between men and women in pay and employment conditions before the expiry of the transitional period on 29th December 1975.
§ Mr. John FraserConsiderable progress has been made towards the implementation of the Equal Pay Act, but there are still some employers who have made no moves towards implementing its provisions.
The following table shows the numbers of collective agreements and wages orders which were discriminatory at the end of 542W June 1975, in each industry group, compared with the total number of agreements and orders on my Department's register.
NUMBER OF COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS AND WAGES ORDERS ON THE DE REGISTER* WITH DIFFERENT RATES FOR MEN AND WOMEN AT 30TH JUNE 1975 Industry group Number of discriminatory collective agreements and wages orders at 30th June 1975 Total number of agreements and orders on DE Register Agriculture, forestry etc 2 3 Food, drink and tobacco 10 16 Chemicals and allied industries 3 9 Metal manufacture, all engineering and vehicles 3 4 Metal goods 3 7 Textiles 13 21 Leather, leather goods and fur 4 4 Clothing and footwear 10 11 Bricks, potter, glass etc 5 11 Timber, furniture etc. 4 6 Paper, printing and publishing 12 12 Other manufacturing 3 4 Construction — 1 Distributive trades 12 26 Professional and scientific services — 1 Miscellaneous services 7 9 Public administration 1 6 * The Register consists of 151 collective agreements and wages orders which were discriminatory in 1970.
§ Mr. Craigenasked the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the estimated cost of implementing the Equal Pay Act 1970 to industry and commerce to date; and what proportion of total wage and salary bill increases during the same period this amounted to.
§ Mr. John FraserAn inquiry into the cost of introducing equal pay in 1969 showed that it was extremely difficult to assess the likely impact of equal pay legislation on employers' costs. However, as a result of the inquiry, the Government formed the view that the impact on costs of introducing equal pay was likely to be of the order of 3½ per cent. of the national wages and salaries bill.
Because of the complexities of the Act and the interaction of the effects of equal pay legislation with other extraneous 543W factors, it is not possible to establish with any precision how accurate the original estimate was or how much progress has been made. However, on the basis of the information on progress which is available and on the assumption that the original estimate was of the right order of magnitude, the Government estimate that during the five years from June 1970 to June 1975 the impact on costs of introducing equal pay was roughly of the order of 2½ per cent. of the national wages and salaries Bill.
On this basis the cumulative cost to all employers in the public and private sectors of implementing the Equal Pay Act would account for approximately 4½ per cent. of the total wages and salaries Bill increases over the five-year period.