THE Equal Pay Act was passed by Parliament in 1970, and was designed to ensure that men and women across the UK receive equal treatment by employers.

Despite both this landmark legislation, which is now more than four decades old, and the positive change in social attitudes towards equality, the pay gap between men and women in Scotland and across the UK still remains. It’s a serious and challenging issue for us all.

My own constituency is a case in point. Last week, Clackmannanshire Council discussed a report which pointed out that on average female employees are paid over £200 a week less than men in the area, while also earning £86 a week less than the Scottish average for females.

This raises a number of significant and pressing issues that need to be addressed to bring about the equality that we all aspire to.

We need to work hard to ensure that this pay gap is closed in the longer term and bring a larger number of flexible, skilled and higher paid jobs to Scotland. This is easier said than done of course, but the efforts of the Scottish Government and stakeholders are geared to attracting and retaining quality jobs here, which is absolutely the right approach.

At the same time, my immediate concern is that women in low-paid jobs will be disproportionately affected by imminent changes the Tory Government is planning to the welfare system.

Although the SNP at Westminster has forced George Osborne to think again about his plans to change Tax Credits for working people, he’s still unclear about where the planned £12 billion of cuts to welfare spending will fall.

Women shouldn’t have to face a double whammy of low pay combined with cuts to in-work benefits.

But the inequity of our welfare system manifests itself in practical terms as well as in the polices of this Tory Government.

Last Friday a young woman came to the specialist welfare surgery that my team and I organised for constituents. She’s a single mum with a young child, and wants nothing more than the best for her family.

Although she’s currently entitled to a range of benefits to support her to bring up her child, she wants to make sure she does everything she can now to advance her future career, and so found a training course that would allow her to move into better-paid work.

But the DWP’s approach means that when she went to the Job Centre last week to find out what support was available to help her to pay for the additional childcare she needs to avail herself of the training opportunity, she was asked by staff there why she was even bothering, as according to the rules she didn’t need to go back to work for another year?

It simply beggars belief that we have a social security system which, as evidenced by my constituent’s experience, fails to facilitate people trying to improve their skills and seek out higher-paid jobs. A government that professes to want to help people get back into work surely requires an effective and fair social security system to make this practically possible. An overhaul is required.

Contrary to the view of far too many, my experience is that the vast majority of people who claim benefits are doing so because they have to, rather than because they want to. Our welfare system should be there to support people when they need it.

Following George Osborne’s Budget last summer, research carried out by the House of Commons Library revealed that women would be hit financially more than twice as hard as men by measures announced by the chancellor.

Further and more recently, SNP MP’s played a key role in the parliamentary debate which called for the UK Government to make fair transitional arrangements for the pensions of women who have unfairly borne the burden of the increase to the state pension age.

On this issue, as with many others, it’s the SNP who are leading the way in calling call for a fairer, more equal society. It’s not good enough to simply agree in principle that equality is right. Governments have a responsibility not just to legislate for equality, but to build and manage systems which actively support it.

We’ve won a number of battles on this front over the past 40 years, which have benefited the whole of society. We need to press on with this work if we’re to see real progress for all within the next four decades.

Equal pay must be an absolute priority.