Chamber and committees

I shall reply to the member as soon as possible.

Companies provide information to support their Scottish Business Pledge, relating to each of the nine elements. That is used as a basis for decisions about whether or not to endorse that Pledge proposal.

Companies also agree to notify the Scottish Government of any relevant changes of circumstances.

Further to the response to S5W-03466 on 7 November 2016, formal evaluation of the Business Pledge, scheduled for 2017, will provide further evidence of company behaviours.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The UK Spaceport programme is a reserved matter for the UK Government. A Draft Spaceflight Bill was published on 21 February 2017. This sets out how the UK Government plans to regulate launch-to-orbit and sub-orbital spaceflight activities from UK spaceports. This Bill provides for the creation of a regulatory framework to enable commercial spaceflight activities to be carried out from spaceports in the United Kingdom.

Now that the UK Government has published the Draft Spaceflight Bill, we would encourage them to ensure all interested parties are given a clear understanding of the infrastructure requirements involved, to allow interested parties to make progress in developing viable business models.

Since purchasing the airport in November 2013, the Scottish Government and Glasgow Prestwick Airport have received and considered a number of approaches from parties expressing an interest in purchasing or investing in the business. Whilst I welcome such expressions of interest, and where they have been received, they have been commercially sensitive and it would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to comment on these.

The measure used for the indicator is the pay gap in median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) between men and women working full-time in Scotland. The measure compares full-time workers as both men and women working part time earn less on average than full time employees, and a higher proportion of women work part time. The measure chosen matches the headline measure used by the Scottish Government, and the measure used by the Office for National Statistics for the UK and so allows comparison and provides consistency. Although there are no current plans to change the measure, the Scottish Government does plan to update the indicator page on the Scotland Performs website so that the latest figures and trends for all workers are provided as supplementary information.

The gender pay gap in Scotland is decreasing. The full-time pay gap fell to 6.2% last year, which compares with a UK-wide gap of 9.4%. However, we are not complacent and closing the gender pay gap is a priority issue for the Scottish Government, both in terms of promoting equality and boosting economic growth.

Within our powers, we are ensuring greater pay transparency by lowering the threshold for listed public authorities to publish their gender pay gap and equal pay statements, from those with more than 150 employees to those with more than 20.

Our Labour Market Strategy also sets out our commitment to tackling inequalities around pay gaps and occupational segregation for equality groups, including women. Through this Strategy we will put in place new activity and funding to support the promotion and implementation of the Fair Work Framework and will provide £200,000 to Business in the Community Scotland to support the Scottish National Action Plan for Responsible Business.

Our focus will be on engaging with businesses of all sizes to encourage fair pay and workplace diversity best practices, through for example;

Increasing the number of employers paying the real Living Wage which will be of particular benefit to women who dominate low paid, part-time work,

Continuing to champion our Partnership for Change 50/50 by 2020 campaign, encouraging organisations and businesses from the private, third, and public sectors, to make a voluntary commitment to work towards gender balance on their boards by 2020,

Encouraging businesses to sign-up to the Scottish Business Pledge, a mutual pledge between business and government to ensure that prosperity, innovation, fairness and opportunity develop hand in hand in Scotland,

Providing £205,000 to 'Close the Gap' in 2016-17, to encourage and enable action to address the gender pay gap. This includes encouraging stakeholders to go through the Think Business, Think Equality toolkit, an online self-assessment tool for small and medium businesses who want to find out how their business can benefit from improved gender diversity.

The Pregnancy and Maternity working group that I chair, includes actions to improve access to advice and guidance for employers and supporting small businesses to develop improved pregnancy and maternity practices within their workplaces.

Table 1 shows the gender pay gap for each of the 8 Scottish Parliamentary Regions.

Table 1: Gender pay gap by Scottish Parliamentary Region (workplace-based analysis)

Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2016, ONS

Notes

- Covers employees aged 16+ on the PAYE system on adults rates and whose pay was not affected by absence.

- Gender pay gap is defined as the difference between men’s and women’s median full-time hourly earnings as a percentage of men’s median full-time hourly earnings.

For all procurements regulated under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, contracting authorities are required to consider how they could be used to improve social, economic and environmental well-being and act in a way to secure this.

For all procurements subject to EU Procurement Regulations, contracting authorities are additionally required to:

Have due regard to whether the award criteria should include considerations to enable it to better perform the equality duty.

When a public authority proposes to stipulate performance conditions in a contract or framework agreement, it must have due regard to whether the conditions should include considerations to enable it to better perform the equality duty.

We have continued to work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on opportunities to promote equality within our procurement exercises. For example, within the Employability Support Services Fair Start Scotland specification wording has been included that highlights the Scottish Government’s ambitions to tackle inequality, and in particular Women’s Employment.

Scottish Enterprise (SE) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) have taken a number of actions in this area.

For example SE has published a Mainstreaming report which highlights our progress with our equality outcomes. Those which are particularly important for women include:

Increase the number of women, disabled, ethnic minority and young people employed in the growth sectors, particularly at leadership level;

Build the number of account managed, investee or other appropriate client companies led by women, ethnic minorities, young and disabled people;

Uptake of our services by companies operated and owned by under represented groups increasing

In addition, both SE and HIE are members of the steering group of Close the Gap and assisted with the design of their ‘Think Business, Think Equality’ diagnostic online toolkit. This is targeted at SMEs and companies are encouraged to use it via the Scottish Business Pledge website.

As part of its responsibilities under the Scottish Ministers’ Equality Duty, the Scottish Government has undertaken a number of actions to help public sector authorities to better meet the reporting requirements of the Scottish specific equality duties.

In December 2013 four areas were identified where evidence showed public sector needed support most (http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2013/12/9408/downloads), and SNEIP (Scottish National Equality Improvement Project) was established to take these proposals for activity forward. A report outlining progress made in these four areas was published in December 2015: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/12/2411/0.

The Scottish Government continues to work together with the public sector authorities through SNEIP, with particular focus being on identifying and sharing best practice. Last November the Scottish Government held the Equal Scotland Live conference to which representatives of all public authorities subject to the Scottish specific equality duties were invited. The event included over 20 learning sessions, as well as networking opportunities between the public authorities and with equality organisations.

The Scottish Government’s remit does not include monitoring how well the public sector authorities are meeting the requirements of the public sector equality duty. This remit falls to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

This government, within our current powers, is driving forward a range of activity to enable employers to address women’s inequality in the workplace. This includes:

Ensuring greater pay transparency by lowering the threshold for listed public authorities to publish their gender pay gap and equal pay statements, from those with more than 150 employees to those with more than 20.

Legislating for gender balance on public sector boards by the end of this parliamentary year.

Supporting initiatives such as our innovative project to help women returners back into the workplace.

Working with the EHRC to tackle pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace and the Minister for Employability and Training chairs a working group whose remit includes creating guidelines for employers to ensure best practice, as well as improving access to guidance for pregnant women and new mothers. The group have met twice already.

Providing £205,000 to 'Close the Gap' in 2016-17, to encourage and enable action to address the gender pay gap.

We are actively tackling the gender gap in enterprise through supporting the refresh and implementation of the new Women in Enterprise Action Framework due to be launched in 2017.

SDS is working collaboratively with partners to ensure that apprenticeship opportunities are open to all across Scotland. Through a number of measures set out in its Equality action plan it aims to reduce to 60% the percentage of MA frameworks where the gender balance is 75:25 or worse by 2021

Scotland remains the best performing of all of the four UK countries in terms of paying the real Living Wage, with around 80% of employees paid the Living Wage or more. We will continue to work with the Poverty Alliance to increase the number of employers paying the Living Wage which will be of particular benefit to women who dominate low paid, part-time work.