Corporate Governance

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed. I would like to thank the Federation of Small Businesses, which has helped contribute to the shaping of these proposals, through some work it has been doing on corporate governance. Small businesses are very important. Small Business Saturday is coming up, and I think Members on both sides of the House will be paying tribute to and celebrating the vital contribution that small businesses make to this country.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

People in Kettering will be pleased that after years of Labour excess the gap between the highest-paid executive and the lowest-paid employee is narrowing under Conservative leadership. May I suggest to the Secretary of State that he go further, because a big problem is taxpayer subsidy for low-paid employees who are working in companies that make big profits and have big executive pay? May I suggest the use of a ratio: the profit after tax, before dividends, per employee, to the proportion of the workforce on working-age benefits? That would wheedle out the fat cats who are exploiting employees.

[Greg Clark]

I will look at my hon. Friend’s proposal carefully. It is in all our interests, including those of our constituents, that people should be able to have jobs in which what they contribute and what they produce is of sufficiently high value that they are able to have a prosperous future. Part of our reforms, which have come through the industrial strategy and what the Chancellor said in his statement last week, were to raise the earning potential of people right across the country.