§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales what assessment he has made of the extent of the gender pay gap amongst staff in his Department. [40991]
522W
Mr. MurphyThe permanent civil servants in my Department are all secondees from elsewhere and so their home departments determine their salaries. However, the Assembly who supply most of the secondees work closely wit the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) and has assisted in the development of an equal pay model to allow employers to carry out pay audits. It has conducted pay audits for the past two years and will be doing so again this year.
In carrying out the equal pay audit and reforming their pay system, the Assembly have taken particular note o f the EOC Task Force report "Just Pay". They have developed several initiatives to close the gender pay gap including no penalty for mothers who take career breaks to raise families, that is they return to the pay scale point they would have been on had they continued working.