The government has published a new consultation on equal pay and pay discrimination, which makes some significant proposals about attempting to fix the shortcomings of the current system and making equal pay more effective for disabled people and those from ethnic minority groups. Here’s our overview.
Back in April 2025, the government published a call for evidence on equality law. This included a number of questions about pay discrimination and pay transparency. The government has now responded to those aspects of the consultation. As we commented at the time, proposals to simply extend equal pay claims to cover ethnicity and disability did not seem to be an effective way to tackle the issues due to the shortcomings with existing equal pay law and legal procedures associated with such claims. The government’s response recognises that there is a need to address the failures of the current equal pay regime before extending aspects of it to other groups. The new consultation covers two main areas – fixing the current system through pay transparency and enforcement, and making the right to equal pay effective for all.
Pay transparency
The following proposals are put forward to attempt to make pay discrimination less likely to occur, and to give better tools to establish where it has happened.
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