Conservative MP calls for change to 'unfair' Equality Act ruling in favour of entirely different jobs: 'It has to go!'

In a landmark victory for the workers, Next lost, and now warehouse workers and shop floor staff must be paid precisely the same.

Speaking to GB News, Lam said the "job evaluation study" which determines the verdict on such cases "has to go".

Lam explained: "The problem with these types of cases is equal pay for equal work sounds like a reasonable principle, but the outcomes that we're actually seeing when this law is applied are really unfair.

"Now the reason that the Next case is unfair is because the warehouse jobs were considered much less desirable, and so people had to be paid more money in order to fill those roles. Specifically the three women who brought this case, one of them said on the stand she would only have even considered going to work in the warehouse if it had paid 'a lot more money'.

"So businesses are left not being able to fill the roles that they have because they can't pay market rates."

Highlighting that the legislation is "outdated", Lam stressed that the jobs market and society was "very different" back when it was created to modern day society now.

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Lam told GB News: "What we have here is a classic case of unintended consequences. So the Equality Act sort of doubles down on the Equal Pay Act, which was passed in 1970, but that was over half a century ago.

"The world was very different, society was very different, the job market was very different. It wasn't as easy if you were a woman to get access to the higher paid roles that men had access to, but that doesn't apply in this case, those days are over."

In a pointed criticism of the women who sued their employer, she added: "Any of the women who worked in one of Next's shops could have moved to go and work in the warehouse, if what really mattered to them was earning more money, and they chose not to do that.

"And rather than respect individual choice and the needs of a company, the commercial needs of a company to pay market rates, we're now in a position where the law says that the courts can rule exactly what people are paid."

Questioned on whether there needs to be a complete change to the legislation, Lam concluded that certainly in the case of employment rights and equal pay, it does need to be changed.

Lam stated: "This particular bit essentially does. Equal work for the same job is a principle that should stand in law, there's there's no reason not to have that.

"But what the Equality Act says is that equal work is not where the jobs are the same, it's not even where the jobs are broadly similar.

"Equal work, the only real way you can tell, is where a job evaluation study rates the jobs as being worth the same, and that has to go."