Bishop Rebukes Escalating 'City Salaries'

The Bishop of Worcester has criticised escalating "City salaries" as "unfair", as statistics reveal that up to 4,000 people will earn more than £1m in 2006, which is a new salary record.

The Rt Rev Peter Selby has rebuked the news saying it was "insulting" that such salaries were justified by performance. In particular, he said that it was "galling" to NHS workers, according to the BBC.

As the world looks to take action against debt levels across the globe, the Bishop called for an intervention to be made into the wage market.

Bishop Selby took part in a service in September, praying for NHS workers in Worcestershire that were set to lose their jobs following financial cutbacks.

The Bishop said, "What we find most unfair when looking at pay rates is when people who earn huge sums of money are also insulated from the risk. Their contracts are written in such a way that when they fail they receive huge rewards as pay-offs. It's very galling for people who are in the National Health Service who find themselves under threat of losing their job."

Highlighting the methods of justification for such high wages, Bishop Selby said, "There is something slightly insulting about this constant reference to people that have performed well, as though nurses and hospital porters and teachers don't perform well or shouldn't get rewarded when they do."

He concluded: "We can intervene to make life fairer so that people who don't have the opportunities of making such astronomical sums, and don't want to make such sums just decent ones, get a fairer crack of the whip."