Men urged to be 'allies' to combat Jersey's gender pay gap
The gender pay gap is widest in the finance and information sectors where men get paid more than 20% extra, according to Statistics Jersey.The gap also tends to widen as workers get older, peaking in people's 50s, according to the report.
Ms Mourant said: "We have been told by male colleagues that they don't really know how to support us so we are delivering a roundtable about how best we can work together."She said the goal was to "hear experiences" and gain insights into what people could do to "move forward and let go of biases which are deeply ingrained in us as a society".She said the subject was "contentious" adding: "Most people will assume men and women can't get paid differently for doing the same job."That isn't the gender pay gap. We're talking about the average, the difference in earnings between men and women."
She said reasons given for this gap included taking maternity time or a lack of ambition.She said there was also a school of thought that women "lacked confidence" but that this was a "debunked myth"."If we start drilling down into different sectors and age ranges that disparity becomes absolutely wider."For us, this is all about bringing men into the conversation because we know we can't make change unless all of us are moving in the same direction."
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The Guardian
14 hours ago
- The Guardian
Revealed: Yorkshire Water boss was paid extra £1.3m via offshore parent firm
The boss of Yorkshire Water, one of Britain's biggest water suppliers, has received £1.3m in previously undisclosed extra pay since 2023 via an offshore parent company, the Guardian can reveal. Nicola Shaw received £660,000 from Yorkshire Water's Jersey-registered parent company, Kelda Holdings, in the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 financial years. The size of the fees was not disclosed in the annual report of the regulated subsidiary, Yorkshire Water Services. The utility company at first refused to detail the pay Kelda Holdings had awarded Shaw, saying the parent company was a 'private entity registered in Jersey and subject to separate disclosure frameworks'. Only after the Guardian raised questions about the ability of MPs and bill payers to scrutinise the pay awarded did the company reveal the amount of the two payments. Yorkshire Water said it complied fully with the regulator Ofwat's requirements on pay disclosure and bonus payments, and that the extra payments relating to work for Kelda Holdings were paid by shareholders, not bill payers. Regulated water companies must report directors' pay in their annual accounts each year, but there is no obligation for parent companies to disclose their pay to the regulator or the public. Companies in some offshore secrecy locations, including Jersey, have no obligation to reveal executive pay. Water companies have come under intense scrutiny in recent years amid outrage over the sewage flowing into Britain's rivers and seas at the same time as significant bill increases. Politicians and campaigners have expressed their anger over the million-pound pay packages awarded to top executives, but the Guardian last week revealed that average pay for chief executives still rose by 5% in the 2024-25 financial year. The government moved in June to ban bonuses for the bosses of water companies guilty of the worst environmental breaches. Yorkshire was one of six companies caught by the bonus ban, after it agreed a £40m payment in March for excessive spills from storm overflows as a result of poor maintenance. It received another £850,000 fine on Thursday for pumping chlorinated water into a stream in 2017. Gary Carter, the national officer for GMB, a union representing water workers, said: 'This is another case of water companies not listening to the outrage and concerns of the public over the payment of unjustifiable salaries. 'The fact that this salary is hidden and not transparent just further undermines the reputation of water companies. This sort of behaviour has got to end.' Yorkshire's published accounts reported that Shaw's pay from that company had dropped by nearly a third in the 2024-25 financial year, from £1,028,000 the year before to £689,000. The accounts, however, also said that Shaw and the chief financial officer, Paul Inman, had received remuneration from Kelda Holdings, which 'is therefore disclosed in the financial statements of that company'. But Kelda Holdings has no duty to file accounts publicly because of Jersey's relatively lax laws, and Yorkshire at first declined to say what she was paid by the parent company. Singapore's government owns a third of Kelda Holdings, with the US investor Corsair Capital, Germany's DWS and the Australian pension fund SAS Trustee Corporation owning the rest. The refusal to disclose the pay did not appear to breach any rules, but it meant that MPs and bill payers had no way of knowing whether Shaw's total pay had increased since the bonus ban. The company said Shaw did not receive performance-related pay from Kelda Holdings, but did not share Kelda's accounts. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The revelation of the extra payments means that Shaw's total pay from Kelda Group for the two years were £1.7m and £1.3m. Inman received £440,000 from Kelda Group in 2024-25, on top of a salary of £662,000. A Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: 'We do not believe that any work our chief executive does on investor-related activities should be paid for by Yorkshire Water customers. For that reason, fees in 2024-25 for work such as investor engagement, financial oversight and management of the Kelda Group were £660k and were paid for by shareholders. 'This fee reflects the critical importance of the work during this period that was led by Nicola, and as a result, shareholders directly invested £500m into Yorkshire Water to support the delivery of critical investment over the next five years, with a further commitment of £600m before the end of March 2027.' The Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, said: 'With pipes bursting and rivers contaminated, it is shocking to learn that Yorkshire Water's boss has concealed her £1.3m award. When people across Yorkshire faithfully pay their water bills, they expect better. 'This behaviour makes the case why water should return to public ownership and those at the top held accountable for every penny spent and every benefit taken. I trust that Labour's expected audit reform and corporate governance bill will ensure transparency across utility companies, when introduced.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
VIP contract introduced by Tory peer left government owed £24m
They were the lucrative deals that epitomised the 'VIP lane' set up by Boris Johnson's government during the Covid pandemic, which gave priority for personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts to people with political connections. Peter Gummer, a former PR boss who has been Tory peer Lord Chadlington since 1996, had smooth access at his fingertips. The erstwhile adviser to John Major has 'close personal friendships with many senior Conservative party politicians', he has said, and as president of the Witney constituency association in the Cotswolds is 'close friends' with its most notable MP: David Cameron. When the pandemic reached Britain early in 2020, Chadlington was a director and shareholder of a company registered in Jersey, majority-owned and run by David Sumner, a serial entrepreneur then based in Dubai. During the first lockdown, Chadlington embarked on an effort to introduce a Sumner company to supply PPE. He contacted Cameron first, texting him at 7.13am on 19 April 2020. Cameron texted back that his own close friend Andrew Feldman, whom he had appointed to the House of Lords when he was prime minister, was working for the government on PPE procurement. Chadlington then texted Feldman, who said to get in touch on his new Department of Health and Social Care email address. By 8.04am, less than an hour after his initial text to Cameron, Chadlington was emailing Feldman, copying in Sumner, to make a direct introduction. 'David,' Chadlington wrote, addressing Sumner. 'This is my friend Andrew Feldman. He can help you with PPE we discussed this morning. Drop me off chain. Peter.' Sumner then sent Feldman an offer to supply PPE. Feldman forwarded it to civil servants operating the VIP lane, telling them: 'An interesting offer from David Sumner who was introduced to me by Lord Chadlington.' A week later, the DHSC awarded Sumner's UK company – a small, loss-making healthcare staff agency, SG Recruitment – a £24m contract to supply coveralls. A month later the government gave the company a second contract, worth £26m, to supply hand sanitiser. The full story of how this £50m example of the government's VIP lane commissioning turned out is only becoming clearer now. It was far from a success. Despite the government contracts, SG Recruitment, later renamed, went into liquidation in December 2023. The liquidators have just issued their official report. It confirmed for the first time that the DHSC entirely rejected as 'unusable' the PPE supplied under the first contract, and has put in a claim for the full £24m. However, all the money has gone from the company. It went bust owing £1.1m in taxes to HMRC. The liquidators found that payments were made out of the company to connected businesses and 'unknown third parties', some apparently overseas. The main bank account was closed in December 2021. Sumner transferred ownership of the company in March 2023 to a woman the liquidators said they believed to be a Philippine national, whom they were unable to contact. The sum total of money found was in an overseas transfers account: £5. The parent company, Sumner Group Holdings (SGH), of which Chadlington was a director then chair, went into liquidation earlier, in 2022. Chadlington's lawyers told the Guardian in June 2023 that when he put the Sumner companies forward for PPE contracts, he was unaware they had financial difficulties. 'He had no information which gave rise to financial concerns regarding SGH and/or SGR in April 2020,' they said. But the Guardian has seen evidence that indicates Chadlington was made aware in January 2020 that some SGH creditors were pushing the company, and Sumner personally, to repay at least $18m, claiming that they were owed in total approximately $30m at that time. There is also publicly revealed evidence that the Sumner companies were under financial pressure before Chadlington made his introduction. SGH was put into liquidation by a consultant, Douglas Geertz, whose fees were never paid. A 2022 court judgment noted that SGH's chief operating officer told him in the summer of 2018: 'I regret that SGH finds itself in very challenging financial circumstances.' In December 2019 other creditors had sued another Sumner group company in the British Virgin Islands for £2m. A published court judgment noted that: 'Relations [with these creditors] deteriorated in late 2018 and collapsed completely in September 2019.' The £2m appears never to have been paid. SG Recruitment, the UK company, had made losses of £700,000, and was financially reliant on SGH, in the year before it was awarded the PPE contracts. Despite all this, Chadlington used his connections to contact senior Conservative figures from April 2020, including Matt Hancock, then the health secretary, promoting Sumner as a supplier of PPE. Chadlington encouraged Sumner to secure contracts, messaging him after the approach to Feldman with 'Brilliant. Keep going' and 'Excellent. Looks like you have an inside track.' Chadlington has twice been investigated by the House of Lords commissioner for standards for his approach to Feldman, under a section of the conduct code that says peers 'must not seek to profit from membership of the House'. Chadlington did not tell either investigation that he sent the email introducing Sumner to Feldman. He told the commissioner's second inquiry in August 2023: 'I did not facilitate an introduction.' He was cleared of any misconduct both times. Chadlington has now disclosed that email introduction and the text messages he exchanged with Cameron, Feldman, Hancock and Sumner, after he was asked to provide evidence to the Covid-19 public inquiry. It published the messages and his witness statement in May this year. Chaired by Heather Hallett, the inquiry is considering the VIP lane as part of its examination into how the government handled the pandemic. The Covid Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) group, which represents relatives of 7,500 people who died of Covid, is an inquiry core participant. The CBFFJ's lead lawyer, Pete Weatherby KC, has been very critical of the VIP lane and highlighted SG Recruitment as a key example. The inquiry is looking at how Chadlington's introduction affected the contracts being awarded, but not at whether the PPE was ultimately delivered. Johnson's government's operation of the VIP lane has been widely criticised for prioritising politically connected companies ever since its existence was leaked in October 2020. As the government frantically scrambled to fill depleted stockpiles, it spent £12bn on PPE in 2020-21, of which almost £9bn had to be written off because it was substandard, defective, past its use-by date or overpriced. The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition has pointed to evidence that VIP lane contracts cost £3.8bn, almost 30% of the total, and delivered more expensive and more unusable PPE than non-VIP contracts. Hancock and other ministers have defended the VIP lane, arguing that it enabled the government to prioritise credible offers. Chadlington was a director of SGH from 2018, then was appointed chair in April 2020, starting the role in June 2020, his lawyers said. In his statement to the Covid inquiry, Chadlington said that it was later, 'within a few months' of becoming chair, that he and his fellow SGH directors did become 'increasingly concerned' about the way the business was being run. 'We were concerned about unpaid wages and fees, contracts falling through, and increasingly vague and confusing responses from Mr Sumner and the management team to questions from the SGH board, as well as Mr Sumner's apparent overoptimism about the state of the business.' Despite this, as late as April 2021, Chadlington was enthusiastically supporting Sumner to bid for a further government PPE contract, telling a fellow director that Sumner was being asked to quote 'on a huge (and I mean huge!) contract' to supply gloves. That showed that the government 'have no doubts about our legitimacy', he wrote to the director. The same day he messaged Sumner, encouraging him to publicly market the company as a government supplier. Ultimately the company was accepted as a possible supplier of gloves, but no contracts were awarded. Chadlington has repeatedly said he did not personally benefit from the PPE contracts, telling the Lords commissioner's first inquiry in 2022: 'I received no commission, bonus or direct financial benefit from the two contracts awarded to SG Recruitment Limited.' The Guardian has seen SGH filings in Jersey showing that in the year after the award of the contracts, Chadlington was issued with 27.5m new shares in the company, which he appears not to have paid for. Chadlington's lawyers said the shares were not a bonus, they were 'growth shares' issued to him and the other non-executive directors after he became chair and reorganised the board. Three months after supporting Sumner to bid for the PPE gloves deal, in July 2021 Chadlington resigned from SGH. All the non-executive directors were owed fees, he has said, and they resigned at the same time. Chadlington was owed $100,000 director's fees when SGH went into liquidation, almost $350,000 in consultancy fees, and a $180,000 loan. Sumner, who is believed to be in the Philippines, replied to the Guardian's questions by email. He said the DHSC reduced the amount of hand sanitiser bought under the second contract, paying £16.6m rather than £26m, so £40.6m for the two contracts. Sumner said the company had the required commercial and regulatory experience to supply PPE and delivered in accordance with the contracts, and that profit margins were 'circa 15%', although he did not provide evidence for this. He did not answer questions about the payments made out of SG Recruitment, or the closing of its bank accounts in 2021, but said that all money was 'accounted for properly'. In relation to its liquidation, he said the company 'was sold to a third party' almost a year before, 'so it is very disappointing that the new owners had not made a success of the company'. He said he did not accept Chadlington's criticisms of his management. Of the SGH liquidation and questions about the $30m debts creditors were claiming, Sumner said: 'SGH Jersey was not a contracting party and so not relevant.' After Chadlington provided his messages to the Covid inquiry, the Lords standards commissioner has since opened a third inquiry. The possible conduct breaches are the same as previously, but also this time whether he failed to act on his 'personal honour'. That appears to be a question of whether he was not fully transparent with the two previous inquiries. Chadlington's lawyers responded to the Guardian's questions by saying that he did not act in any way improperly 'in connecting Mr Sumner with Lord Feldman'. They said it was up to the government, not Chadlington, to carry out due diligence on SG Recruitment. In relation to questions about his knowledge of SGH's financial position, and the $30m debts, when he introduced Sumner for government PPE contracts, the lawyers said: 'Our client understood that while the company had faced some cashflow issues, these were common to most startup businesses.' He only became concerned about SGH's viability later after he became chair, in particular by the beginning of 2021, they said. In his witness statement to the Covid inquiry, Chadlington said: 'While I was not involved in the awarding of contracts for PPE, I was proud that, by making the necessary introductions, I had played a very small role in helping the country during a national emergency.' A DHSC spokesperson said after Labour was elected to government, it has sought to recover money from PPE contracts that did not deliver. He did not answer questions about SG Recruitment, saying the DHSC cannot currently discuss specific companies. A spokesperson for the CBFFJ said: 'While our loved ones were dying, often without the PPE that could have protected them, the system enabled political insiders to use their connections to secure public contracts. It is devastating to learn that the PPE from one of SG Recruitment's contracts was rejected as unusable. This is exactly the kind of evidence the Covid inquiry should be examining. Bereaved families deserve answers. The public deserves answers. Justice means getting to the bottom of how this happened, who benefited, and who should be held accountable.'
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Four Jersey food producers win prestigious award
Four Genuine Jersey producers have received Great Taste Awards in Jersey Fudge Pot, Jersey Seafood, La Mare Wine Estate and The Smokey Shed have all earned stars from the food and drink accreditation are blind-tasted by a panel of more than 500 industry experts, with the judges scoring on flavour, texture, appearance, and quality of Garton, chief executive of Genuine Jersey, said: "These awards are a fantastic endorsement of the passion, skill, and quality that our members bring to everything they produce." He added: "To have four of our local businesses recognised on such a highly respected national stage is something Jersey can be extremely proud of."
