MP backs bill to try and end the gender pay gap

Big companies could be forced to publish the pay gap between male and female employees following a vote in Parliament on Tuesday. South Lakes MP Tim Farron was one of the prominent MP's supporting the bill.

The bill, if it becomes law, will put a duty on companies with over 250 employees to publish their figures on the pay gap between the men and women working for them. An attempt to get companies to publish voluntarily has failed, with only five out of around 7,000 large companies actually producing the information and as a result MP's like Tim supported the proposal to put this idea on a more statutory footing.

Analysis of the Office for National Statistics' annual survey of hours and earnings show that over a career, from the age of 22 to 64, a woman earned an average of £209,976 less than men.

Tim said: "Its 50 years since the women of Dagenham went on strike for equal pay and almost 45 years since the equal pay act was introduced and I hope this bill will take a step further to ending it. Big businesses earn hundreds of millions pounds in profit - they should pay their staff the same.

"For me, this is a clear issue of fairness, there should not be a different rate of pay because of your gender and it's shocking that it's this requires a bill in 2014 and doesn't happen automatically."