By The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has called for a ban on employers asking job candidates about their salary history or salary expectations, according to HR Grapevine. The UK equality watchdog made the recommendation on 29 October 2026 as part of a broader push to tackle pay inequality.
The EHRC argued that asking about salary history or expectations can carry existing pay inequalities into new roles. The regulator also supports publishing pay information in job adverts and wants employers to be required to answer statutory pay questionnaires.
Why salary history questions matter for equal pay
The logic behind the EHRC’s position is straightforward. When an employer asks what a candidate currently earns, any pay gap from a previous role becomes the baseline for the new offer. A woman who was underpaid in her last job can find that shortfall baked into her next salary, even if she moves to an employer with fairer practices.
The same applies to salary expectations. Candidates often anchor their expectations to what they currently earn. If that figure is depressed by past discrimination, the expectation itself perpetuates the problem.
Under the Equality Act 2010, men and women must receive equal pay for equal work. The Act covers basic pay, bonuses, overtime, pension contributions and other benefits. An employment tribunal can compare a claimant’s role with a comparator of the opposite sex doing like work, work rated as equivalent, or work of equal value.
What a ban would mean for hiring teams
If the EHRC’s recommendation becomes law, employers would need to remove salary history and salary expectation questions from application forms, interview scripts and recruiter checklists. Hiring managers would instead set pay ranges based on the role itself, market data and internal pay structures.
The practical shift is significant. Many UK employers currently ask about current salary as a screening tool, using it to filter candidates before interview. Removing that question forces a move towards pay transparency, where the advertised salary range does the filtering instead.
Payroll teams would also feel the effect. New starter records would no longer carry a previous salary field, and any systems that capture that data for benchmarking would need reconfiguration. HR teams should review applicant tracking system fields and interview templates now, even before any legal change, to identify where salary history data is collected.
Publishing pay in job adverts
The EHRC’s support for publishing pay information in job adverts aligns with a growing trend across the UK. Many public sector employers already advertise salary bands, and some private employers have adopted the practice voluntarily.
Publishing a salary range does more than help candidates. It gives HR teams a defensible basis for offers and reduces the scope for negotiation that favours confident candidates over equally qualified but less assertive ones. It also creates an audit trail if an equal pay claim arises later.
Employers that publish ranges should ensure they are genuine. A range that spans £30,000 to £60,000 for the same role is unlikely to satisfy a tribunal that pay is being set transparently.
Statutory pay questionnaires
The EHRC also wants employers to be required to answer statutory pay questionnaires. These questionnaires previously existed under the Equal Pay Act 1970 but were abolished in 2014. They allowed an employee who suspected unequal pay to ask their employer a formal set of questions about pay and conditions.
Bringing them back would give workers a pre-tribunal tool to gather evidence. For employers, a statutory questionnaire creates a formal obligation to respond, with potential inferences drawn from silence or evasive answers in any later tribunal claim.
HR teams should prepare for this by ensuring pay data is clean, current and explainable. If a questionnaire arrives, the employer needs to show how pay decisions were made, what comparators exist and whether any differences are justified by a genuine material factor such as experience, qualifications or location.
What HR should do now
No legal change has happened yet. The EHRC has made a recommendation, and any ban would require government action. But the direction of travel is clear.
HR and payroll leaders can take practical steps now. Review recruitment processes to identify where salary history is requested. Consider removing those questions voluntarily. Audit pay data by gender and other protected characteristics to spot unexplained gaps. Test whether job adverts carry salary information and whether those ranges reflect internal reality.
The Equality Act 2010 already requires equal pay for equal work. The EHRC’s recommendations are aimed at making that obligation easier to enforce and harder to evade.
Sources: HR Grapevine
Photo: Job Cohen interview by Jos van Zetten, CC BY 2.0
