The job interview question you don't have to answer
While UK employers are legally permitted to ask job applicants about their salary history, experts and equality advocates suggest that candidates are not obligated to answer. The practice is increasingly discouraged as it can perpetuate systemic pay inequality based on gender and race.
Why it matters
Addressing salary history questions is a key component of modern efforts to close the gender and diversity pay gap in the workplace.
Figure caption, Watch: How much is your salary?
Cost of living correspondent Published 3 hours ago Prepare all you like, but there is often still one job interview question that leaves you feeling uncomfortable.
While employers in the UK are within their rights to ask you how much you get paid in your current role, applicants are not obliged to tell them.
Recruiters have been encouraged to stop posing questions about salary history and, in the EU, new rules will prevent them doing so.
But in the UK, there is still a chance of it coming up, so how best should you answer?
When interviewing or deciding on new staff, employers must not discriminate against an applicant based on so-called protected characteristics, including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
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