Andrea Leadsom
Main Page: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)Department Debates - View all Andrea Leadsom's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
Not only have we looked at that; we are doing it. In the spending review, we announced an extra £900 million for HMRC, which is creating an extra 2,000 specialist posts to tackle tax avoidance and tax evasion. It took the hon. Gentleman’s party 12 years just to set up a specialist unit at HMRC to deal with high net worth individuals. We have extended that to ensure that there is a specialist unit to deal with the tax affairs of all those who pay, or should pay, the 50p rate.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to tackle excessive executive pay.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
14. What steps he is taking to tackle excessive executive pay.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), yesterday announced a package of proposals designed to address the market failure in setting executive pay. The proposals represent a major step forward in empowering shareholders, reforming remuneration committees and improving transparency in order to give shareholders the tools that they need in order to control unacceptable rewards for failure.
Andrea Leadsom
What consideration has my right hon. Friend given to a system of three-year rolling executive pay, in which the worsening of performance in one year would lead to a claw-back of remuneration from previous years? Does he think that putting pressure on companies to adopt such a system would be sufficient, or would it be necessary to legislate?
Danny Alexander
My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is already part of the Financial Services Authority’s code of practice for banking remuneration. It is particularly important to end the distorting effect of those kinds of incentives in the financial sector, but the additional powers that we are giving to shareholders, which my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary announced yesterday, will allow companies in other sectors to adopt that kind of practice, should they wish to do so.