‘I want to right the wrongs of gender pay gap across the whole of Scotland’

Scottish Labour wants to “right the wrongs” committed by a city council led by its members over equal pay, leader Anas Sarwar has said.

Speaking after the launch of the party’s Women’s Manifesto yesterday, Mr Sarwar said although he wasn’t personally responsible for a pay gap for employees of Glasgow City Council, which saw some people working in traditionally female-dominated roles such as catering or home care paid up to £3 an hour less than male-dominated jobs such as refuse workers or gardeners, he admitted there were issues which “we didn’t get right”.

In the manifesto, Scottish Labour pledged to implement statutory gender pay reviews across the Scottish public sector – as well as private companies, with over 250 employees who benefit from public procurement – and said it would provide one-off central funds to pay for historical equal pay claims.

Two years ago, the council agreed to pay out a reported £548milliontocompensatethe thousandsofwomenemployed by the council for the money they should have been paid – in many cases going back to 2007 when the new job evaluation scheme was adopted.

The scheme had been supposedtoensuremenandwomenreceivedequalpayforjobsof the same value.

Mr Sarwar said: “"I don’t question the faith in which people made those decision at those times, but I think if they look with hindsight, it’s clear that justice was not done and wedohavetorightthosewrong and those wrongs are not yet complete.

"That’s not just in Glasgow, that’s across the whole of Scotland.”