The High Pay Centre (HPC), a thinktank that exposed fat cat CEO salaries and widening pay gaps, is closing. Founded in 2011 by former Guardian business editor Deborah Hargreaves, it focused on extreme pay at the top. Its closure feels like the death of an idea, according to Polly Toynbee.
Unique Focus on Predistribution
While others campaign on tax and redistribution, the HPC was concerned with 'predistribution'—the origins of inequality in pay and control over pay rates. Its annual report, covered even by rightwing media, reawakens disbelief at the way we live now. This year, it calculated that the median FTSE 100 CEO earned £4.4m, taking less than two and a half days in January to be paid what a median full-time employee earns in a year.
Corporate Governance Dysfunction
The HPC kept reminding us that UK incomes are the second most unequal among rich countries, outstripped only by the US. It analysed how corporate governance underpins this dysfunction. Britain is an outlier with no worker directors on boards, while 13 EU countries plus Norway legally require employee representation. A lack of voice at the top means just 55% of FTSE 100 companies pay the living wage advocated by the Living Wage Foundation.
Funding Loss and Closure
The HPC is the first victim of Aberdeen Group's abrupt termination of the Financial Fairness Trust, which funded many research organisations. The trust was founded with a £90m windfall from Standard Life's demutualisation in 2016, with former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling as founding chair. Beneficiaries included the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation, and the Child Poverty Action Group. Paul Johnson, outgoing IFS director, called it 'a crucial part of the UK's research funding infrastructure'.
Anti-DEI Winds
In the wake of Donald Trump's corporate crusade against 'woke' diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), US giants like Meta, Walmart and McDonald's dismantled diversity aims. UK companies followed suit; People Management reports more than half changed their approach to DEI last year. Aberdeen plainly took fright at a foundation devoted to fairness. Last month, Kemi Badenoch committed to abolishing the public sector equality duty.
Outrage and Consequences
David Norgrove, who chaired the Financial Fairness Trust after Darling, called the axing 'shoddy behaviour'—'abrupt, rude, ungracious'. But Aberdeen Group had a very good year, reporting 'continued strong momentum' and expecting record net flows in excess of £3.7bn, a 50% increase. Andrew Speke, the HPC's last employee, closes its door with a final report revealing CEO pay at its highest and the gap at its widest. Patriotic Millionaires said it immediately put HPC at the top of its list for urgent donations, so maybe some will step up.
