Can the ratio between the salaries of the highest paid and average paid workers in an organisation tell you very much?

Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, said that a recent IMF report found that high pay differentials were "quite a clear indicator of impending crisis".

Perhaps counter-intuitively, he said, a large pay gap was "bad for business" as it de-incentivised all but manual workers.

But Tony Travers, local government finance expert at the London School of Economics, said that the 1:20 differential often discussed would have very little impact on the civil service.

"Top public sector pay will probably gently decline" from now on, he predicted.

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