Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Yes, pay of the one per cent is unfair. But worse: it’s rational

You don’t have to be a socialist to be alarmed at the way executive pay is, once again, spinning into the stratosphere. Did the head of Burberry really need £16 million? And the head of Nationwide £2.6 million? It fit a trend: the average FTSE100 chief executive salaries are rising again – by about 10pc according to the latest figures – and we can expect a repeat of the old debate about the high pay being a problem that needs to be tackled. This is a dangerous distraction for anyone seriously interested in helping the poor, as I argue in my Telegraph column today.

The problem of high executive pay is actually worse than it first appears. If it were a simple case of plunder or back-scratching, it could be ironed out with a few investigations. Shareholders don’t want to pay a penny more than they have to – and if they were being conned by remuneration committees who had grown too close to the people whose pay they were supposed to be monitoring, then this could be ended quickly.

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