Will the Green Party’s affordability crisis policies work?

The Green Party has announced policies to tackle the affordability crisis. But will they work?

Green Party: 10:1 pay ratio

A key policy Green Party leader Zack Polanski and deputy leader Rachel Millward spoke of is that CEOs cannot earn more than 10 times their lowest-paid employee.

This will likely be a progressive regulation, generally. A possible issue is that it does not guarantee that the lowest-paid workers will earn more. That’s because the company may simply reduce CEO pay, rather than raise pay for the majority.

An example is Tesco, which shows the scale of the problem and how the 10:1 ratio could well deliver. The boss of Tesco got £9.93 million in the 2023-24 year. But the lowest yearly rate for Tesco workers was £22,304 for the same period. That means the boss receives £39,249 every day compared to £88.16 for an employee.

The thing is, if Tesco’s CEO pay was cut in half to around £5 million, workers would need a pay increase to £440,080.

And if 340,000 employees, nearly all of whom earn less than 10% of the boss’s pay, received a pay increase of £423,776, that would cost Tesco £145 billion, which is clearly too much of a cost.

The largest companies, at the least, do seem obsessed with paying CEOs excessive amounts – with boss pay of the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 up to an average £5.9 million in 2025. So perhaps they would raise worker pay to meet the 10:1 ratio.

But, as mentioned, some corporations may just cut boss pay rather than raise workers’ salaries across the board. Another possible option is for workers’ pay to rise with company profits.

Universal free school meals

Another policy the Green Party announced is providing free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils. The universalism of this policy may well be beneficial for young people. Otherwise, the fact that some pupils dine for free and some pay could increase classism, leaving some children feeling less worthy.

Rent controls

The Green Party further said it’s in favour of rent controls. For more than 70 years, between WWI and the late 1980s, the UK had a system of rent control. Short of stopping treating housing like an asset altogether, it’s a policy that could drive down poverty and put more pounds in peoples’ pockets – as Labour has repeatedly pledged to do, and failed.

Resolution Foundation analysis has revealed that over one million children would actually not be in poverty were it not for eye-watering housing costs and particularly private sector rents.

In many European countries there is some control over rents. For example, in Sweden, tenant unions and landlords negotiate rents based on average earnings, inflation, and costs. In the UK, we do not have such a procedure and under 45s alone wasted £56.2bn in passive income for landlords in 2024.

Featured image via the Canary