The government proposes to introduce a new Bill on pay gap reporting and equal pay rights in relation to disability.
The government has said that an Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will include some proposals which were not in the Employment Rights Act 2025. It said in October 2024, in Next Steps to Make Work Pay (gov.uk), that the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will include:
- extending pay gap reporting to ethnicity and disability for employers with more than 250 staff: see Disability pay gap reporting for the government’s March 2026 consultation response on this, including indicative draft clauses
- extending equal pay rights to protect workers suffering discrimination on the basis of disability or ethnicity: see Equal pay: disability proposals on the government’s April 2025 call for evidence on this and on the following two points
- ensuring that outsourcing of services can no longer be used by employers to avoid paying equal pay
- implementing a regulatory and enforcement unit for equal pay with involvement from trade unions
That Next Steps document in October 2024 said a draft bill would be published for pre-legislative scrutiny. It also said there would be further consultation before regulations were made to implement the reforms.
