The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is seeking employment lawyers’ views on proposals that would see employers who fail to comply with equal pay laws required to conduct a pay audit of their company.

The BIS consultation, published this week, noted that the gender pay gap still exists despite the equal pay legal framework having been in force since 1975, and said there is ‘continuing evidence of non-compliance’.

It said government wanted to address this through improving flexibility at work, encouraging greater transparency and ensuring effective enforcement of equal pay law.

As part of this enforcement, the government seeks lawyers’ views on making employers carry out a pay audit.

It says that by focusing on employers who have failed to comply with the law, it will ‘not add burdens for good employers who have taken steps to ensure they do not discriminate against women’.

The BIS consultation also seeks views on parental leave suited to the modern workplace, employers and working couples.

It proposes maintaining the current 18 weeks’ maternity leave, to be taken in one continuous block around the birth of the child, but dividing the remaining 34 weeks into leave available to either parent.

The consultation also proposes extending the right to request flexible working to all employees, not just parents or carers.

It seeks lawyers’ views on compliance with various European rulings around absence, sickness, and maternal and parental leave.

The consultation closes on 8 August.