By Steve Doughty

Harriet Harman was yesterday slapped down by national statisticians over her
claims that women are paid a fifth less than men.

The Women and Equality Minister was told she must no longer use a single
figure to describe the complex differences in the earnings of men and women.

Instead she will have to give three measures - among them one which shows
that far from earning less than men, women in part-time jobs are actually
paid more on average than their male counterparts.

The ruling from the Office for National Statistics is the culmination of a
running row between Labour's deputy leader and Whitehall watchdogs, who
called her use of figures on the gender pay gap 'misleading'.

It will also affect the workings of Miss Harman's Equality Bill, as until
now the minister has insisted that public sector bodies - which will have to
say whether their pay scales are unfair to women - should use her way of
working out the pay gap.

A report from the ONS called Presenting Gender Pay Statistics said no one
measure of the pay gap was adequate or appropriate for Government bodies to
use. Instead, it said three different figures should be counted.

More...
  a.. City grandee rejects Harman's demand to review 'nightmare' of men-only
boardrooms
  b.. MAIL COMMENT: Equality under Balls means equally bad

One is Miss Harman's favourite measure. This lumps in all workers, both
full-time and part-time, and gives a pay gap of 22.5 per cent.

But this fails to take into account that because more women choose to work
part-time than men, the average pay for women is artificially driven down.

In the past the ONS has favoured a figure that counts just full-time
employees. This shows men earning 12.8 per cent more than women.

From now on, yesterday's report said, both figures must be used, together
with a third setting out the gap between male and female parttime workers,
which is 3.5 per cent in women's favour.

During the summer, watchdog Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics
Authority, wrote twice to Miss Harman's department warning of misleading use
of gender gap data.

He told the Equalities Minister in the spring that her interpretation of
state earnings surveys could 'confuse the general public' and 'undermine
public trust in official statistics'.

Yesterday the ONS report pointed out that because 41 per cent of women in
employment work parttime, compared with only 11 per cent of men, Miss
Harman's preferred method skews the figures to make women look worse off.

Miss Harman's officials welcomed the acceptance by the ONS of the 22.5 per
cent figure as one of the measures which will be used in future.