The case for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting has been examined by the House of Common's Women and Equalities Committee in a one-off evidence session.
The Committee has recommended that the government should make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory by April 2023. The Committee's report acknowledges the challenges of collecting ethnicity data, but states that businesses are ready for the government to act.
The government consultation which stated that it was "time to move on ethnicity pay reporting" closed in January 2019 and we are still awaiting a response. At a Parliamentary debate on the issue last September it was confirmed that the government was still considering responses to its consultation and would respond "in due course". It was later indicated that the response would be published in the autumn of 2021 but this did not happen.
On 31 March 2021 the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (which was set up by the Prime Minister in 2020 to identify racial disparities and inequalities in Britain and ways to address them), published its first report in which it made a number of recommendations to address ethnic and racial disparities and inequalities. Although it had been expected that the Commission would call for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting it recommended voluntary reporting, suggesting that organisations accompany their data with diagnosis and action plans.
