Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:31 pm on 19 February 2019.
Well, I'm very glad, Suzy Davies, that you have drawn attention to that lack of consistency in terms of implementation of the actions to tackle the gender pay gap, which has decreased slightly in 2018, but the gender pay gap in Welsh Government is around 8 per cent. That's not acceptable. We need to ensure that we drive this through, and I will be meeting the Minister, as you said, in terms of driving this through the employability plan, and also, through the economic contract. The employability plan, of course, is crucial, because we need to ensure that that looks at the gender pay gap. If we analyse the gender pay gap information, if we look at companies who employ over 250 people, we need to encourage companies to, for example, pay the real living wage and monitor all our programmes, particularly the economic ones, to ensure gender equality is at the heart of the action. So, that will be very much the focus of my meeting with Ken Skates in the next couple of weeks.