Mark Casci: It is time for us to have a proper grown-up debate about wages

Certain sections of the media and the Taxpayers’ Alliance are obsessed with pay, particularly in the public sector.

Last week 300 officials working in the upper echelons of the NHS were shown to be earning more than £100,000 in Yorkshire, something the TPA derided as “enormous remuneration packages” for “hundreds of meddling busybodies”.

This came just days after that, another much-loved target for bile, the BBC, was told that the stars who earn more than Theresa May should be forced to be, in effect, publicly named and shamed.

Hot on the heels of all of the revelation that executive pay for the chief executives of our FTSE100 companies rose to an average of £5.5m last year, an increase of circa 10 per cent.

Mrs May has already made clear that pay equality will be top of her agenda and, following accounts of utterly reprehensible behaviour from the likes of Philip Green and Mike Ashley, it seems the knives have never been out in greater abundance than they are currently for the fat cats.

Now, please rest assured my friends, I am not about to channel Peter Mandelson and start advocating people becoming stinking rich with an impassioned defence of sky-high wages for top bosses. But are we focusing our attention in the wrong place?

The opprobrium hurled at the so-called fat cats must be compartmentalised and viewed through a rational prism. The Prime Minister’s drive to see more equality of pay, while doubtlessly politically motivated, is one born out of profound social responsibility. Mrs May wants more big companies to come clean about pay gaps within their organisations and not one of our nation’s top listed firms reports any information concerning ratios between chief executive and average salaries.

As well as appealing to the man in the street’s sense of fairness it will also provide us with the soundest of platforms upon which to begin founding responsible capitalism.

We are now entering a period of profound economic uncertainty. It has not been as important in decades for us to attract and retain the best talents in business as it is now.

Wages are a crucial part of achieving this. However as successes are rewarded to those in the boardroom, so should they be to the staff at large - and at a comparable ratio.

Any analysis of NHS salaries needs to be based on that common economic denominator known as supply and demand. An NHS Trust boss needs to have a thorough grounding in finance, medicine and management - a hugely diverse portfolio of skills that I am certain is an extremely small market when it comes to hiring.

And to ensure the health and well-being of our loved ones I am sure most reasoned people would agree that we need to best and brightest calling the shots.

And as for the wages of BBC stars, its a soft and easy target. Along with athletes it nigh-on impossible to justify the eye-watering packages afforded to them.

But the Beeb is much more than reality TV and chat shows, it also employs some of the best journalists in the world who provide a vital public service.

The debate on wages is far more nuanced and complex than a straight-forward comparison with the salary of the Prime Minister. On that rationale new Manchester United signing Paul Pogba is worth around nine months of Theresa May’s year. The comparisons are simply not valid and distract from the really important matters, those of ensuring salary reflects the hard work, talent and results and individual achieves.

Only when we get to this stage then we can have a proper debate about equality.

Wouldn’t that be rich of us?