Equal Opportunities Committee, 29 Oct 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Official Report 73KB pdf

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Equal Pay Review

The next item is on equal pay. A paper has been circulated to members. Members will recall that, at our meeting on 1 October, we agreed to include an item on an equal pay review on this meeting's agenda. Do members have any comments or questions?

First, I thank the clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre for producing respectively a very informative background paper and a briefing. I hope that the documents will be helpful. The most cogent points relate to what the National Assembly for Wales has tried to do with regard to equal pay, which was something concrete as opposed to something abstract. The briefing tells us what the Assembly tried to do and how it went about it, but I do not know what the results of its work were. Has the pay structure that was introduced led to a closing of the gaps that were identified in the initial review? If that information exists, could it be made available soon? That would better guide us in our trying to do something here in Scotland.

The briefing contained some interesting background stuff about what the Assembly was trying to achieve, but I would be dead interested to find out whether the work carried out in Wales has closed the pay differential between men and women who carry out similar work—either those who are directly employed by the Assembly or those who are otherwise affected by the review.

We could ask SPICe to carry out further research. I understand that Scottish Parliament personnel are researching the results of what the Welsh Assembly has been doing. Does the committee agree that we should ask SPICe to carry out a bit more research?

Members indicated agreement.

There are no other questions or comments on the papers. They are there more for information than for anything else.