The announcement comes ahead of the concluding report on women on boards from Lord Davies, who will give his final recommendations on how further progress can be achieved later this week. Earlier this year, business hit the 25% target for women on FTSE 100 boards set by Lord Davies in 2011, but there remain 23 all-male boards in the FTSE 250, and female representation in the wider FTSE 350 is lower than 25%.

The latest announcement follows a consultation which concluded in September and looked at how when and where the data should be published. The government says new regulations which set out how this will work in practice will now be set out in due course.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: ‘You can’t have true opportunity without equality. There is no place for a pay gap in today’s society and we are delivering on our promises to address it.’

Nicky Morgan, minister for women and equalities said: ‘Business has made huge amounts of progress already in recent years – the gender pay gap is the lowest since records began, but it should appal us all that, 100 years on from the suffragette movement, we still don’t have gender equality in every aspect of our society.

‘That’s why I’m delighted that we are going further than ever before to ensure true gender equality in the workplace.’

In an additional attempt to increase diversity in recruitment, Big Four firms KPMG and Deloitte have signed up to another new government initiative by pledging to recruit on a ‘name blind’ basis, alongside other graduate employers including the Civil Service, Teach First, HSBC, Virgin Money, BBC, NHS, Learndirect and local government.  

Under this new, voluntary, agreement, names of graduate recruitment applications will not be visible, reducing potential discrimination.

A formal announcement on the initiative will be made by Cameron at a Downing Street roundtable later today.

The roundtable includes David Barnes, managing director of Deloitte; Marianne Fallon, partner and head of corporate affairs at KPMG; as well as the head of human resources at HSBC, the CEOs of the Civil Service and NHS and the BBC’s director of strategy and digital.

David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte, said: ‘We want to show that everyone can thrive, develop and succeed in our firm based on their talent, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any other dimension that can be used to differentiate people from one another.

‘The introduction of name-blind recruitment processes and school and university-blind interviews will help prevent unconscious bias and ensure that job offers are made on the basis of potential – not ethnicity, gender or past personal circumstance.’

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