THE Labour Party, Westminster’s Houses of Parliament, HMRC, and energy regulator Ofgem are just a few of the organisations which have had their “platitudes” on gender equality called out by an automated Twitter account.

The “bot” account (@paygapbot) uses data from the UK Government pay gap website, where employers with 250 or more employees have published figures comparing men and women’s average wages across the organisation.

It automatically responds with an organisation’s pay gap statistics to any post put out on Twitter hailing equality on International Women’s Day.

SNP MP Alison Thewliss said the account should help show that it is "deeds, not words" that matter.

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In one example, Keir Starmer’s party wrote: “Labour is the party of equality.

“This #InternationalWomensDay, we acknowledge the bias and discrimination women continue to face in 2022 and recommit to their fight for equality.”

The bot responded: “In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 4.1% lower than men's.”

The House of Commons and the House of Lords also came under scrutiny from the bot, which revealed both have pay gaps that man women take home less on average.

The reported discrepancy is greater in the Lords (5.1% lower for women) than in the Commons (0.9% lower for women).

Other UK Government bodies fared worse than either of the Houses of Parliament.

HM Revenue and Customs wrote: “At HMRC we are proud to celebrate women in senior leadership, who have found great job prospects across the UK. #LevellingUp”

However, the bot revealed that women’s median hourly pay at HMRC is 8.8% lower than men’s.

Energy regulator Ofgem has a pay gap of 10.5%, while the Department for Education has a 4% gap, the bot said.

The account, which has already accrued more than 200,000 followers since starting up in March 2021, says it aims to get organisations to “stop posting platitudes [and] start fixing the problem”.

The bot has also revealed that female staff at councils across the UK, and in NHS trusts, face taking home lower wages than men on average.

However, there are some organisations where this pattern does not hold true.

One such business is MOWI, a Scots firm that is the UK’s largest supplier of farm-raised salmon. In response to a tweet about International Women’s Day, the bot said: “In this organisation, men's and women's median hourly pay is equal.”

The same was true for the Scottish Government’s non-ministerial Registers of Scotland department.

Even rarer than equal pay were organisations such as The Disabilities Trust, a UK charity that pays women on average 1.4% more than men.

The SNP's shadow chancellor Alison Thewliss, who has shared some of the bot's posts, told The National: "On International Women's Day, organisations are always keen to talk about what they are doing for women. Much of that work is laudable, but we cannot forget that there are still persistent issues of inequality in society on every other day of the year.

"The gender pay gap bot account highlights very clearly how many of these same organisations have a lot of work to do to tackle long-standing issues like the pay gap. I hope this transparency focuses minds and encourages these organisations to take action. Deeds, not words."

You can click here to see the Twitter bot account, or find the UK Government's pay gap data here.