Employees should legally be able to find out what their colleagues are earning, the UK's equality watchdog has said. Bosses should be required to respond to questionaires about colleagues' pay to cut pay discrimination, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has proposed.

In addition, employers should be prevented from asking about current salary when offering a job to stop a history of discrimination from carrying on, it said. Employers in the UK are currently allowed to ask you how much you get paid in your current role, but applicants are under no obligation to tell them. At present, employers do not have to respond to employee requests for salary information about colleagues.

The EHRC urged lawmakers to make it compulsory for employers to provide information including colleagues' basic pay and hours worked, how employees' pay compares with each other, and information about bonuses, overtime, shift-premiums and performance-related pay, within a specific timeframe. The rights watchdog argued that this would help cut pay discrimination, especially against women.

Women would also benefit from employers publishing salary details in job adverts, the EHRC has said previously. John Kirkpatrick, the EHRC chief executive, told the BBC that employers should not be able to ask about salary history when setting pay.

"When they do, what tends to happen is that can embed a history of disadvantage or discrimination in future salaries," he said. While employers should be able to offer a competitive salary, this should not "create a pattern that discriminates," he said.

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women and gender equality, has previously said that asking the question risked maintaining historic unfair differences in pay due to gender, race and disability inequality.

Rather than offering a salary based on skills, experience and performance, it meant employers rewarded an individual's perceived worth and negotiating skills instead, the society said.