Ms Dee Forbes:

The area of contractors was brought to my attention at the same time as we were carrying out the rolling gender review. At that time, I committed to looking at it and it was from that point onwards that we carried out the Eversheds process. I am not clear if there was a process before that or not but my commitment to the trade union group and the employee base was that, following the rolling gender review, we would carry out a detailed assessment of our contractors. That is what we have been doing, as I outlined in the opening statement.