Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. We want to see young people being attracted to apprenticeships right across the range, and he is right to raise the importance of getting good-quality people into the social care system. I would be delighted to speak with him and others who are interested in that area of future employment.

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of executive pay.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)]

Average FTSE 100 CEO pay more than quadrupled from £1 million in 1998 to £4.5 million in 2012. Since then, the median average has fallen by £1.04 million. We have recently implemented a number of reforms to make further improvements to executive pay transparency and accountability through vehicles such as the UK corporate governance code.

[David Hanson]

The Government’s Green Paper on corporate responsibility was published more than two years ago, and since that time we have seen corporate pay issues in Carillion and only last month in Thomas Cook. Last week, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee questioned the chief executive of Thomas Cook about corporate responsibility issues on pay. What precisely have the Government done to act on corporate pay since that Green Paper two years ago?