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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

The Government will rue the day when they say in public that they have no policy on directors year after year getting six times the pay of other people. That is not a sustainable position. As regards transparency, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, has elided two different points. On the transparency of data, there is some improvement, in the narrow sense, of what remuneration committees may publish. But I am talking about two other sorts of transparency: first, the transparency of the comparison on pay, pensions and so on, between what directors get and what everyone else gets. Why is their performance and improvement supposed to be six times better than that of everyone else, which is an insult to most other people? Secondly, in terms of not only the comparison of what has been happening, the justification ought to be spelt out for people to discuss and challenge. There is no reason why, if the Government find it difficult to put these in the Bill—I give my noble friend notice that we will have to come back to this—there cannot be a way for the Government to be much more forthcoming in the headings of policy they wish to see pursued. I go back, in conclusion, to what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, said half an hour ago. Some of the principles of what one wants to achieve perhaps cannot be put into company law. That is a challenge which I hope that my noble friends will think about in the time available.