Mandatory salary disclosure in job ads moved a step closer this week as the Cabinet Office published draft proposals that would require employers to publish pay information before candidates apply or interview, overhauling decades-old anti-discrimination law. The consultation runs until October, but the government has yet to decide what, precisely, must be shown.
What the proposals actually require
The draft plans give employers three options to disclose: an exact salary, a pay range, or a “benchmark rate” linked to the open role. Officials will consult on which of these becomes the legal minimum. Bonuses and other conditions may also be required disclosures, though that too remains unresolved.
Employers that do not publish a job advert at all would have to hand candidates the information in writing before any interview takes place. That is the harder edge of the proposal, and it catches informal hiring as well as formal recruitment campaigns.
The Cabinet Office argues the changes will help jobseekers make informed decisions and spare companies the cost of candidates with, in its own words, “misaligned pay expectations.” It also cites academic studies suggesting that opaque pay enables stereotyping: “When pay is opaque, salary decisions can be influenced by stereotypes, such as stereotypes of women, ethnic minorities, or disabled people.”
Beyond job adverts, Briefs reports that the proposals would also extend equal pay protections to race and disability, broadening a framework that currently focuses on sex discrimination. The government plans to phase in any changes after the consultation to give employers and employment tribunals time to adapt, with thousands of equal pay cases filed annually already straining the current system.
The proposals would apply in England, Wales, and Scotland. Northern Ireland is a separate question: its executive has not committed to following either the UK proposals or the equivalent EU rules that apply under the Windsor Framework.
Salary disclosure in job ads: the gap between law and practice
There is a reasonable case that legislation is overdue. Research by HR Datahub found that 1 in 4 UK job ads still carry no salary information at all, with wide variation between sectors and seniority levels. Separate data from CJA Group found that salary transparency lifts applications by 27%, yet only 41% of UK employers always share pay ranges in their adverts.
Voluntary disclosure exists, but it has its limits. The CIPD has cautioned that employers who do disclose are not always genuinely transparent, with pay ranges sometimes spanning more than £10,000. Public bodies and charities disclose far more consistently than the private sector, which is precisely where the legislative gap bites hardest.
My read is that a wide pay range, disclosed under legal compulsion, will satisfy the letter of any forthcoming law while doing very little for the women, ethnic minorities, and disabled workers the policy is meant to protect. The government would be wise to set a maximum band width in regulation rather than leaving employers to define their own idea of transparency.
How this sits alongside the EU Directive
The UK proposals arrive as the EU’s own pay transparency rules take hold, albeit unevenly. Ravio notes that the EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970) entered force on 6 June 2023, with member states required to transpose it by 7 June 2026. Only four of the 27 member states, Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, and Malta, met that deadline.
The EU rules go further than the UK draft in at least one significant respect. According to Debevoise & Plimpton, large EU employers will be required to act if their gender pay gap exceeds 5%, against a backdrop where women in the EU earned on average 12% less than men in 2023, a gap that has barely shifted in a decade and contributes to a 30% pension pay gap. The EU Directive also bans employers from asking about salary history, a provision the Cabinet Office consultation does not currently include.
The government has flagged that Civil Service World already covers a senior-official transparency framework requiring the disclosure of salaries, expenses, and benefits in kind for officials earning £90,000 or more. The new proposals would, for the first time, push that transparency logic into the private hiring market.
The consultation closes in October. If the government wants this to be more than a rebranding exercise, what it decides to mandate beyond a salary range will tell you everything.
