Yesterday, Ed Miliband said the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester should not receive a bonus this year.

If Labour wanted control of executive pay of state owned banks, then they should have made renegotiation of contracts a condition of the bailout when they were in power.

Labour should have also demanded that all front office investment banking staff in those banks had to re-apply for their jobs, without any guaranteed bonuses.

Labour left the coalition toothless to deal with the issue. Once the banks returned to operational profitability, they lost the legal financial justification for placing investment banking front office staff under consultation to review pay and conditions.

Today, Vince Cable has proposed a series of measures to give shareholders a binding vote on executive pay, and crucially, given Sir Fred Goodwin’s deal at RBS, exit packages.

Vince Cable found himself unable to address high pay at RBS, Lloyds and HBOS, thanks to Labour’s failure to address the issue when it bailed out the banks.

Vince has done what Alistair Darling should have done, and proposed the legislation he needs to get the powers the government needs.

As the largest shareholder in RBS and other banks, the government will now be able to control the executive pay at those institutions, and fix the problems Labour created.