Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-05-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average hourly earnings were of his Department’s (a) BME and (b) non-BME employees in (i) 2015 and (ii) 2016.

Justin Tomlinson

The Department for Work and Pensions pays employees an annual salary and does not pay an hourly rate.

The Department uses a grade structure to determine salary rates. The grade structure is underpinned by Job Evaluation and Grading Support (JEGS), an analytical job evaluation tool which meets all requirements of legislation and EHRC statutory codes of practice on Equal Pay. The use of JEGS and its application in determining the appropriate grade for a role enables us to determine where employees are doing equal work based on “work rated as equivalent”.

DWP Equality data is published on an annual basis on https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions/about/equality-and-diversity this includes the average pay by indicated ethnicity each year up to 2015.

The main factor influencing the DWP pay gap is the difference in distribution of staff within each of these groups across the grades. DWP continues to regularly review ways to address the pay gap.

This report is usually published in July each year and looks at data over the previous financial year. The report for 2016 is not yet available.

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