Head of Communications Kate Andrews writes for City AM:
Today’s briefing paper from the High Pay Centre (HPC) has zoned in on the gap between FTSE 100 chief executive pay and the average salary of UK workers in 2014: 183/1.Perhaps it is the HPC’s emphasis – or perhaps it is the world’s recent focus on inequality - that has most people, in the media and elsewhere, focused on this divide. The assumption is that high executive pay is costing lower earners a pay rise, and that condoning people getting rich at the top is an endorsement of keeping people poor at the bottom.
But one does not cause the other; and while it is crucial that we tackle in-work poverty and address long-term low pay, capping executive pay will not raise the salaries of people at the bottom. Indeed, this could lead to negative consequences of its own.