The minimum wage, the equal pay questionnaire, the childcare strategy, an effective duty on public sector employers to do equal pay reviews, all the changes on maternity rights and flexible working, the widespread availability of voluntary tools such as the EOC's equal pay kit, Agenda for Change in the NHS and the code of practice on pay for employees of private sector contractors in the NHS and other parts of the public sector, the various proposals of the Women and Work Commission that are being implemented - I don't believe that most employers would agree that there has been no action on equal pay over the past ten years.

I'm also not convinced that it would be possible to introduce mandatory equal pay audits without the process turning into a box-ticking exercise, although the system in Australia - where employers with 100+ staff must undertake an annual review of gender equality in their organisation - is worth looking at (http://www.eowa.gov.au/). The difficulty is providing the tools and incentives for employers to tackle occupational segregation as well as rooting out pay discrimination.

I also very much doubt that Harman will be attempting to persuade Brown to throw any cash at the equal pay problem in local government. Even the EOC is not in favour of government doing this. The costs are so huge because local government has been ignoring the problem (understandably in many ways as it has not been required to treat it as a priority and councils have an endless list of demands on their budgets) for so long. Had a more proactive approach been taken a decade ago -when the single status agreement was first agreed - or even four years ago - when the local government pay commission set out an action plan for the sector - the costs would not be nearly the size they are today. What government certainly could have done over the past few years, however, was build stronger incentives for local authorities - through the targets used to evaluate councils' performance for example - to tackle the issue.