Mandatory pay gap reporting for race and disability in the UK: a path to workplace equality?

The UK government has announced plans to introduce the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, which will require employers with 250 or more employees to publish their disability and ethnicity pay gaps annually. This proposal builds on existing gender pay gap reporting requirements, and aims to help employers identify pay disparities and address their root causes. The rationale for extending pay reporting in this way is clear – focusing solely on gender overlooks the compounded inequalities experienced by individuals with multiple intersecting characteristics. By extending reporting to include ethnicity and disability, the government aims to shed light on the factors driving pay disparities and, through the threat of media and public scrutiny, encourage employers to eliminate structural barriers and discriminatory policies.
However, significant challenges exist in both the implementation and impact of this proposed scheme. In particular, it is unclear how employers can effectively and accurately collect information about their employees’ disabilities and ethnicities, and how data can be published without revealing identifying information about individual employees. Moreover, given trends from gender pay gap reporting, questions remain about whether employers will be sufficiently incentivised to reduce disparities, and whether the Equality and Human Rights Commission has the necessary powers and resources to ensure compliance with these new reporting measures.
This paper evaluates the necessity, feasibility, and potential impact of disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting. Through comparison with the existing gender pay gap reporting scheme, it examines whether this extension will drive meaningful change, or if instead it risks becoming a box-ticking exercise with limited practical outcomes.