Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am glad to have that spelt out in such an authoritative way. Paragraph B.1, which is entitled ““The level and make-up of remuneration””, relates to the remuneration of committees and boards. It says, under the heading ““Supporting principle””:"““The remuneration committee . . . should also be sensitive to pay and employment conditions elsewhere in the group””—" that means apart from at the board level—"““especially when determining annual salary increases””." Again, the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, will correct me if I am wrong, but that is therefore an obligation on companies. Am I right? He is nodding. If it is an obligation on companies, it is perfectly straightforward to assume that, unless my friends in the Government think that the Government’s policy is somehow different from that, the codes that will derive from the legislation that we are discussing today should also incorporate it. I will say one more word about the lack of justification for what is happening with the galloping growth of inequality before I revert to what is essentially an amendment to do with transparency. Those noble Lords who were present on all those days in Grand Committee will know that there seemed to be a consensus. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, will correct me if I am wrong, but everyone seemed to say, ““Transparency good, regulation bad””. I am now a convert. I am on the side of the angels, more or less. I am calling for transparency, and you could not get more modest than what we are talking about here. We are not going to make extravagant claims or paint extravagant pictures of the income distribution in this country now resembling a church steeple, rather than a more traditional structure—although, come to think of it, that would not be a bad metaphor. It is quite difficult if you are a government Back Bencher to strike the right note. I have some experience as a government Back Bencher, and I am delighted to be joined by my noble friend Lord Whitty, who has less. We are feeling our way as to how on earth you can ever do anything useful from the government Back Benches. We are told that we are too early, that we are too late, that we are attacking the Government or that we are saying nothing useful at all, and so on. It is very difficult. Anyway, we have raised the matter in Grand Committee and have now refined our amendment to the extraordinarily modest proposal before noble Lords today. We think that these ratios will be seen by more and more people for what they are—namely, ratios that are not in the main justified by economic performance. There are many countries in Europe that do not have this growth. I gave detailed figures in a debate that we had recently about globalisation and income distribution. The fact is that countries such as Holland, which are at least as open market as Britain—the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, is shaking his head. Maybe he would like to intervene and tell me why.