If Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey was expecting to bat away some gentle questions on monetary policy before the Commons this morning, he hadn’t reckoned on Labour MP Angela Eagle. She was quietly frothing with rage at Bailey’s recent suggestion that workers need to exercise restraint when asking for a pay rise in order to tackle inflation.
Eagle began like the late Bamber Gascoigne with a series of quick-fire questions on the median salary of UK workers and care workers. Alas, salaries turned out not to be Bailey’s specialist subject — not even when Eagle asked him about his own. ‘It’s somewhere over £500,000,’ Bailey stumbled, before adding ‘I don’t carry that around in my head’. In fact, his base salary for 2020/21 was £476,596, on top of which he received £1,989 in taxable benefits, £95,319 payments in lieu of pension contributions, and £1,634 of ‘other’ remuneration, bringing the total to £575,538 — 18 times the median UK worker’s earnings.
Salaries turned out not to be Bailey’s specialist subject — not even when Eagle asked him about his own
Eagle’s quite reasonable point was that earnings in real terms have been pretty static for the past 14 years — so when will workers be allowed a pay rise without being accused of adding to inflation? Bailey’s less-than-satisfactory reply was that the poor would suffer most from inflation.
Eagle then asked him about bankers’ bonuses and executive pay: should they, too, be exercising restraint? Bailey switched tack and said it wasn’t the job of the Bank of England to tell anyone they can’t have a pay rise.
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