In such a Budget week one’s default setting tends to be cynicism, and you could say that this measure exudes the somewhat desperate whiff of fiscal air-freshener. It costs the Government nothing and makes it look as if it cares. While jobs evaporate and taxes soar, what better distraction than a righteous crusade to load more paperwork on employers?

Whether it will do any good is yet to be seen. Harriet Harman’s determination to keep the hour-for-hour calculations “simple” rather than take in the subtleties of working life could lead to great anomaly.

There are sexist injustices, of course, and if you are looking at women without home ties there is no excuse for unequal pay. But the bald fact is that in many workplaces, women with young families or other caring anxieties earn less than men simply because they deliberately avoid roles and promotions where the pressure of responsibility is too great. For now, anyway.

I have conducted “work-life balance” seminars in companies ranging from heavy engineering to law, and while some women show headlong ambition, a great many others yearn for a period of quieter life even though they can’t afford to stop work entirely. Staying late, meeting overnight and weekend deadlines, handling sudden crises for no extra pay at the cost of family life — these things form an inevitable part of some jobs. And there are women who frankly prefer a decade on the “mommy track” and accept that it will cost them. It will not be easy for every employer to reflect this in the audit. Some companies will look worse than they are.

The other thing that must be said is that our national squeamishness about money has aggravated the problem of unfair pay. Nobody — except the most manic Gordon Gekko, the greed-loving character in Olive Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street — wants to admit what they earn. The idea of publishing everybody’s tax return online, Scandinavian style, gives us the vapours. One of the guilty pleasures of tormenting politicians, Jonathan Ross and the rest is the deliciously un-British ability to see into their pockets. In ordinary jobs “secrecy agreements” have long been a sine qua non of executive pay deals, and both sides love them.

From the outside we freelance contractors can only look on with fascination. Our own pay scales are arbitrary, ad hoc, personal and vexing.

I once heard from a friendly mole that two men doing exactly the same job as me were paid almost double. It took one mischievous note to the corporate lawyer to sort that out before I let daylight in. So perhaps there is a case for the air-freshener of audit. But this week, it still feels more like an attempt to prettify the financial wreckage.

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