Business Disability Forum statement in response to The Times article on 5 May
Business Disability Forum (BDF) is a not-for-profit business membership organisation working in disability inclusion. One of BDF’s functions is to consider public policy proposals and how they will impact on disabled people and business.
BDF has no power to make public policy regarding the introduction of mandatory disability pay gap reporting or any other public policy. The Government makes policy taking into account the research and evidence from BDF and many other stakeholders.  
Business Disability Forum was first prompted to look into the unintended consequences of introducing mandatory disability workforce and disability pay gap reporting in response to a question about the unintended consequences of mandatory disability pay gap reporting posed by the Government in their December 2021 consultation. We carried out focus groups with our members and the disabled people they employ to evidence our response to that consultation, including the question on unintended consequences. We submitted our consultation response in April 2022.
As the debate on mandatory disability workforce reporting, and later, disability pay gap reporting has evolved, we have continued to look into the unintended consequences and concerns with our membership and the disabled people they employ. This is for the purpose of informing the debate and in order that whatever is mandated in the policy is as effective as it can be.
We published the findings of our long-term qualitative research project ‘Towards meaningful disability workforce and pay gap reporting – The challenges and unintended consequences’ in March 2025 which includes findings from both employers and disabled employees.
We will be using these along with additional findings from that report within our response to the Government’s consultation on mandatory disability pay gap reporting which closes on 10 June.
BDF firmly believes that all disabled people should be paid fairly. We remain concerned, however, about the unintended consequences of mandatory pay gap reporting on disabled employees. Our research was carried out and published in this spirit and with the aim of informing the debate and making any Government policy as effective as possible.