Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 17 July 2018.
First Minister, your own intentions towards honing a Government of equals is sadly undermined by figures that make clear that the Welsh Government's gender pay gap, for your own staff, has recently increased. The annual employer equality report earlier this year found that the pay gap between men and women working in the Welsh Government had actually increased in 2017 from the previous year. On average, men actually earn more than women in every single pay grade, from team support to senior civil service. Men also outnumber women in each of the three highest pay grades and the average basic full-time equivalent salary for men was more than £3,000 higher than for women. Given such a scale of inequity and unfairness within your own Government departments, do you not now think that it is time to practise what you preach and to better seek to lead by example—in other words, First Minister, by getting your own house in order?