I suspect it may in part have been because it gave them a chance to take a pop at Harriet Harman – but there’s big coverage in The Sun, and other media, today for figures collated by the Liberal Democrats about the gender pay gap in central government:
Official figures show female civil servants are paid up to A THIRD less than male colleagues.
The revelations are an embarrassment to the party’s self-styled women’s champion Harriet Harman.
She has vowed to close the gap between the sexes – and has threatened to name and shame firms who give men more.
Furious critics last night accused Ms Harman of betraying thousands of women who work for her own Government.
Whitehall stats show the Attorney General’s Department is the worst offender, paying women an average of 28 per cent less than men.
Females at the Treasury earn 27 per cent less than a typical fella.
The pay gap is 20 per cent at the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development.
Lib Dem equalities spokeswoman Lynne Featherstone said: “Forty years on from the Equal Pay Act, the Government still has not put its own house in order.
“That women make up such a small proportion of full-time senior civil servants is depressing. If the civil service is unable to treat men and women equally, what hope is there for the private sector?
“It looks like Gordon Brown isn’t the only person in Whitehall who treats women like window dressing.”
You can read more in The Sun here. It’s not often The Sun gives any positive coverage to the party, let alone at the length of this piece. Good work.
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2 Comments
What would Dame Evelyn say? And this is just the established civil service. One of the effects of privatising – sorry, creating executive agencies – under the Tories and continued by Labour was that equal pay agreements did not apply to agency staff.
Are we definitely sure these are official figures? I know that Harriet Harman is always saying how much women are paid less than men in society, and while true, the figure for the pay gap she and her department have quoted several times, has been too high, and the head of the ONS has made several statements rebuking the government for using it. Lots of info at Mark Easton’s blog about it.