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Banking (Responsibility and Reform)

There are some basic questions of fairness that people in Britain feel strongly about, and we have to reinstate that fairness. In 1979, the top pay at Barclays was only 14.5 times that of the average pay. It is now 75 times higher. Did people not want to work at the top of Barclays then? Did they not want to work hard for their bank? I think that they did. The problem is that the top levels of pay have accelerated to a level that no one considers fair. The suggestion that, if we do something about that, people will go elsewhere and that we will be unable to recruit seems strange. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) spoke of a time when personal tax rates were higher, but people were still prepared to do those jobs here. We cannot go on accepting the mantra that they will go elsewhere—