UK rich-poor gap widening

A new study has revealed that affluent Britons are accumulating wealth three times as fast as the destitute. 

According to a research study by the Office for National Statistics, total wealth for the richest tenth of British households increased by 21 percent between 2012 and 2014.

However, for the bottom half of all households, total wealth rose by just 7 percent during the same period.

There are now growing concerns that Britain is becoming an increasingly unequal society.

The ONS figures also showed that distribution of wealth was skewed sharply towards the richest.

Meanwhile, a separate survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development indicated that economic inequality is deteriorating among Britons.

According to the study, 7 out of 10 British employees believe the pay of company chief executives is too high.

‘Outdated economic policy’

Meanwhile, a London-based economist blames what he calls an “outdated economic policy” for the widening economic disparity in the country.

“The (outdated) doctrine is, as long as there is a wealth in the hands of a few, they will spend the money… But it’s impossible for the rich to spend their money.  All that they do is accumulating the money,” Rodney Shakespeare told Press TV on Saturday.

"The rich get richer"

According to the study, the richest 1 percent of the population have as much wealth as the poorest 57 percent combined.

This, as the Government’s Child Poverty watchdog, Alan Milburn, slammed Prime Minister David Cameron’s “One Nation” rhetoric and warned that Britain faces the danger of becoming an “ever-more divided” society.

“The gap between rhetoric and reality has to be closed if the One Nation objective is to be realised. Current signs of progress do not go nearly far or fast enough to address the divided Britain of the present and the One Nation Britain we aspire to become,” Milburn noted.

Meanwhile, shadow Treasury minister Rebecca Long-Bailey has described the figures as yet another evidence that the Tory government’s economic policy is ineffective.

“These eye-opening figures tell you everything you need to know about George Osborne's time as Chancellor and the true nature of this Tory government – the rich get richer, while the poor have their incomes cut and worry about a heavy debt burden…This Tory government has done nothing substantive to tackle the growing problem of wealth inequality in our country, in fact by cutting inheritance tax for a wealthy few at the same time as cutting Universal Credit for working families they are only making matters worse,” she was quoted as saying by the British media.

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