‘The UK’s independent trade policy could be an opportunity to pursue a progressive trade agenda for Southern countries’ says the February 2018 report (pdf) from CLASS on Brexit and trade deals.
What needs to change? The over-representation of women, most ethnic minority groups and disabled people in low-paid, elementary occupations.
This is according to the January 2018 report (pdf) from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This paper sets out what needs to change and who needs to take action to reduce gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
The report finds:
Some elements of pay gaps result from the choices people make about balancing work with other aspects of their lives, though these choices may be dictated or constrained by stereotypes about the roles people, particularly women, are expected to play in society
Part-time work is predominantly low-paid work and therefore the choice to work flexibly inevitably leads to lower pay
The Welsh Government has set clear equality objectives to identify and reduce the causes of employment, skills and pay inequalities
In April 2017, the UK Government introduced gender pay gap reporting for private companies across Great Britain and for public bodies in England
The Scottish and Welsh Governments already required pay gap reporting by public bodies.
Read the full report (pdf).
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is seeking views on recommendations in the Matthew Taylor Review of modern working practices on the enforcement of employment rights.
All work in the UK economy should be fair and decent with realistic scope for development, says the July 2017 Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices.
‘We acknowledge the unprecedented nature of the task of converting existing EU law into UK law. But as it stands this Bill is constitutionally unacceptable’, says Baroness Taylor of Bolton on the Lords Constitution Committee’s report (pdf), in January 2018.
Ahead of the second reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in the Upper House, the Select Committee on the Constitution have published a calling on the Government to amend the Bill.
The report finds:
The Bill is not clear exactly what retained EU law will contain; it potentially
captures laws that do not need to be saved and creates duplicate copies of
laws that have already been transposed into domestic law
The Bill fails to give sufficient clarity and guidance to the courts as to how to go about the task of interpreting retained EU law after the UK leaves the European Union
The Bill also seeks, unsuccessfully and erroneously, to perpetuate the
“supremacy” of EU law post-Brexit.
Read the full report (pdf).
