Tony Lloyd
Main Page: Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Vince Cable
Yes, and that is why operational decisions must remain with the company so that it can make a judgment on the matter. Through these recommendations we are trying to ensure that investors are properly informed, and we are, through transparency, giving them the power to make the judgment that the hon. Lady described, and act accordingly.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept, as a number of his Back Benchers do not, that this is fundamentally a question about what type of society we want to be, and that when we see executives being paid 75 times more than the lowest-paid people in the company, that is not about economic efficiency or incentives, but immorality?
Vince Cable
Yes, this is about different types of society, but of course there are many wider issues than the remuneration policies of public listed companies and many aspects of fairness and inequality. I simply make the point that many other private enterprise economies —Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Japan—have a much more disciplined approach to executive pay than has been the case in the UK, and many of their companies do very well commercially.