The Government was today outlining its plans to cut discrimination and promote equality at work, including allowing companies to favour female and ethnic minority candidates if there is a tiebreak for a job vacancy.

The new Equalities Bill is also expected to order public sector employers to disclose levels of pay to both sexes in their organisation, to cast light on the pay gap between men and women.

Other measures in the Bill will seek to stop pensioners being denied NHS treatment because of their age, and give mothers the right to breastfeed their babies in public.

The section likely to prove the most controversial encourages companies to favour female and ethnic minorities candidates if there is tiebreak for a job vacancy. Critics say that this will discriminate against white men - supporters of the measure say that the balance is already tipped in white men's favour.

Times Archive, 1946: Equal pay

Existing wage differences go well beyond anything that can be explained by differences in the overall efficiency of men and women as workers

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“There might be controversy but you don’t get progress if there isn’t a bit of a push forward,” said Harriet Harman, the equality minister.

“Most women are going out to work and they are just as committed to their jobs. The money that they earn is important to the household budget so they should be paid fairly.

“Yet listen to this figure - if you are a woman working part-time you get 40 per cent less per hour on average than a man working full-time.

“Now either this is because women are not up to the job or else there is discrimination against them. You can’t challenge discrimination when it’s kept swept under the carpet.

“I think there’s a lot of resentment at the unfairness against women. They are not being given the facts.”

Ministers hope the Bill will promote a new era of openness on pay. Trade unions have been pressing for some time for mandatory pay audits to make sure women are not receiving less money than men for doing the same job.

The pay gap between men and women averages 17 per cent across all employees, rising to 45 per cent in the City of London. Individuals often find it impossible to tell if they are being paid less, however, due to a refusal to disclose pay levels. A quarter of all companies have a gagging clause in their contracts forbidding discussion of pay.

The Bill will however only require public sector organisations and companies doing business with the public sector to publish pay levels. Ms Harman has said that if this fails to sting the private sector into following suit, the Government will consider legislating again.

Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat youth and equality spokeswoman, said that the Bill did not go far enough.

“If the Government genuinely wants to tackle equality it must do more to end the growing discrepancy between the rules on pay for the public and private sector. Without compulsory pay audits for the private sector these proposals will represent a very real victory for the hawks in the cabinet," she said.

“Public sector equality rights are fast becoming an ivory tower that private sector employees can only dream of. A few tick-box questionnaires for Government suppliers on their equality policy are going to do little to change the day-to-day opportunities for the 20 million people who work in the private sector.”

One section of the Bill aims to bring about a culture change to put ageism on a par with racism, outlawing age discrimination in the provision of goods and services.

At present, pensioners are routinely refused health, travel and car insurance. Many have complained of poor service in the NHS, being fobbed off by their doctors and denied treatment.

Doctors will still be able to refuse older patients treatment if they believe there are sound clinical reasons to do so, however, and the new legislation has exemptions for harmless age-related systems, such as free bus travel for the elderly and companies like Club 18-30 which only sell to customers of a certain age.

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “The Government needs to be more honest with business. The original intention was that this Bill would simplify the law.

“However, this could end up being a bureaucratic nightmare for small businesses, which the Government should not forget account for 99 per cent of all companies in this country."

Ruth Spellman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, applauded the proposals, saying it is ”a long-time coming, but a welcome and definite move in the right direction".

She said: “Our own research shows that organisations perform more effectively when the workforce reflects a mixed group – across age, gender and race. In a marketplace dominated by skills shortages and increasing levels of global competition it is important to maximise the talent pool,” she said.

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