And it is an argument fast gaining ground, not least with Labour’s pledge to impose an “inequality cap” – setting pay ratios between the highest and lowest-paid workers at 20:1 for government-owned companies, which renationalised utilities would be.
Justifying executive pay is a thorny issue, and not just for those running our water and energy companies. High earners in businesses throughout the private sector are targets for similar invective.
Yet executives, within utilities at least, are accepting it’s an issue that increasingly goes with the territory.
Boards know public, political and regulatory expectation is now only going one way and that it will gain even greater traction in the challenging months and years ahead.
As we have highlighted in our campaign so far, some utility companies are already making real, tangible changes to provide greater transparency for customers and deliver a fairer deal for the public – an approach which now looks the only way to respond.
At the launch of our New Deal campaign in January, some industry voices from across the sector joined the debate to say they recognised customers wanted to see benefits “being shared fairly”, that listening willingly to customers was “vital”, and that taking clear action on things such as fair tax and wage levels will prove far more powerful tools in addressing the legitimacy challenge the sector faces than being corralled into such action by a regulator.
If companies can run their finances in a different way, with an overt focus on matters such as fairness and profit-sharing, then the issue of executive pay will surely become less of a factor.