It's about time finance and water bosses start taking the responsibility their huge pay packets demand

With food inflation close to 20% for much of this year, the Bank of England governor - who is paid almost £600,000 - said that pay “cannot continue” to increase at its current pace if inflation is to fall.

I’m guessing that Bailey is talking about nurses and junior doctors who risked their lives throughout the pandemic, and are currently striking over real-terms pay cuts over the last decade. Or maybe he is talking about teachers, who have had between 5% and 10% real-terms pay cuts since 2011.

Either way, it’s perfectly understandable for workers to want a pay rise, as everything around them goes up in cost. And why should we struggle along with real-terms pay cuts, while the Bank of England’s beleaguered captain is raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds and inflation is running rampant.

Bailey should perhaps think about his own role in the inflation crisis, which has been afflicting the UK over the last year. With Covid and the war in Ukraine having dropped out of the headline inflation figures, he can no longer blame external factors for the mess we're in.

Economists have accused the Bank of England of being behind the curve in tackling inflation. Sir Charlie Bean, who used to be Bailey’s boss at the central bank, said the calls of wage restraint would “fall on deaf ears” as workers were merely demanding pay rises to cover the “erosion in their living standards”.

Bailey’s counterparts at the major banks also seem to be doing quite well out of the current crisis. The CEOs of banks such as Lloyds, NatWest and Santander met with the Chancellor in Downing Street to discuss how to solve the homeowners mortgages spiking, as interest rates rose again.

After the meeting NatWest CEO Dame Alison Rose said: “We’re doing everything we can to help customers and help with the anxieties.”

I’m sure NatWest customers will be pleased to know that just a few months ago, the bank revealed its profits had surged by more than a third to reach £5.1 billion last year, and Rose herself received a pay packet totalling a whopping £5.25 million.

The rate rises have of course helped the banks, who have been accused of not passing those on to savers. Harriett Baldwin, chair of the Commons Treasury Committee, tore into them, saying  they are taking “advantage” of  loyal customers who “have got used to not earning anything on savings”.

While we may not be benefitting from the rise in interest rates, one thing Britons know will likely go up soon is our water bills. And this is in direct response to water companies failing to stop sewage from being pumped into our rivers and seas.

Last year, UK coastlines were basically treated as open sewers as almost one million hours of sewage was dumped into our seas. Just this week, do not swim warnings have been issued at eight major beaches around the country - including at Blackpool.

Yet what did the CEO of Water UK, David Henderson, say when asked about this in Parliament earlier this month. Staggeringly he appeared to blame the public’s use of rivers for wild swimming for highlighting the amount of sewage that is in them.

And according to Environment Secretary, Therese Coffey, us, the public, will likely pick up the bill for upgrades to hopefully keep our waterways free from sewage. Documents from a Southern Water focus group have already revealed the firm is proposing to charge customers 73% more by 2030 - a total of £759 a year. While Anglian Water customers are already facing an £91 annual bill hike to cover sewer upgrade costs. 

It’s about time some of these highly-paid executives took some responsibility for the failures that are affecting hard-working people, who are just trying to stay afloat.