Shadow justice secretary David Lammy believes prime minister Boris Johnson is blocking the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting.
The Labour MP for Tottenham said his party had already committed to the move, but he thought if chancellor Rishi Sunak were to become prime minister before the next election he too would introduce mandatory reporting of organisations’ ethnicity pay gap.
Speaking at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development annual conference, Lammy (pictured) said he fully supported reporting of the gap and criticised the government for its inaction on ethnic disparities.
“I was hugely disappointed that Baroness Ruby MacGregor-Smith’s recommendations, her work on workplace diversity and the fact that we do need to monitor the ethnicity pay gap, has not been implemented and has not been accepted by the government,” he said.
“But it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen under the next Labour government for sure – we’re committed to that.”
And Lammy laid responsibility for the inaction squarely with Johnson.
“My guess is actually, if there were a change in prime minister, for example if Rishi Sunak were to be prime minister, I think it would happen,” Lammy added.
He also urged businesses to take the initiative and not to wait for the government to put laws in place.
“In the meantime companies and organisations can do a hell of a lot themselves,” he said.
“They don’t need to wait for legislation to know the evidence base in their own companies – what are you businesses doing if you don’t know the evidence base?” he added.