Professor Peter Clinch:

Many of the most successful economies around Europe are reasonably high wage and productive economies. It is not an unusual thing in developed economies for wages to be high. What we are pointing out is that when it comes to wages, it is important to have a virtuous circle and in this virtuous circle must be an absolutely clear focus on cost of living and cost of doing business so the way to avoid understandable wage demands right across the economy is to focus upon costs. That is what we as a council do, we produce a cost report and we suggest ways in which those costs can be addressed. Housing is clearly a major driver of wage demands at the moment.