A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
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over 100 more can look forward to retiring on at least £200,000 a year and 80 FTSE firms retain final salary
schemes for all or some of their directors whilst axing them for staff.
Disproportionate wealth contributes to the problem of unaffordable housing in London and the South East.
Similar problems are created in the countryside with the growth of second homes or homes for wealthy
retired.
Tax evasion and avoidance by individuals cost the UK taxpayer £18.5bn in the year 2007-8. Tax avoidance
was about £100bn compared to the government budget of £589. In contrast benefit fraud cost the taxpayer
around £800m.
Poverty in UK A survey published by the anti-poverty charity, Elizabeth Finn Care (EFC) claimed that 12.5
million people or 20 per cent of UK’s population live in poverty. EFC claimed that 3.9 million single people
lived in poverty. This number had risen by around 300,000 since 1997. There are more and more singleperson
households in the UK today, and there is considerable evidence to show that many singletons live far
away from and even lose touch with their social and family circles. Many people living alone are divorced,
widowed and separated women, a group particularly liable to poverty. And precisely because many single
people are outside firm social structures, it can be hard to keep track of them. Adults with children make up
22 per cent of Britain's poor, 900,000 of their number are single parents.
Since 2005, incomes for the poorest 10% of households have fallen by £9-00 to £147 in real terms per week
and the richest 10% have risen by £45 to £1,033. This is a higher growth in the gap than at any time since the
Thatcher era. The number of working adults living below the official breadline rose by 300,000 to 11m. One
in seven adults of working age without dependent children are now living in poverty. The low skilled, with
low education, and young workers will suffer most in the depression.
Child poverty In UK, 3.9 million, one third of our children, live in poverty. End Child Poverty argued that
progress on child poverty is at risk. Tony Blair’s promise in 1999, when 3.4 million children were living in
poverty i.e. in families with 60% less than the median average income, was to halve child poverty by 2010
and be abolished by 2020. By 2005, this had fallen by 16% to 2.7m but it rose again to 3.9 million.
The UK wealth gap is the widest in over 40 years. A report in May 2009 by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)
shows the gap between rich and poor to be the widest since the 60s. The British inequality index, called the
Gini co-efficient, with a base line of 100 in 1961, shows that the poverty gap was declining until Margaret
Thatcher came to power. A de-unionised economy, with pressure bearing down on the low paid, reversed
this trend and made it inevitable that the gulf would widen. So under her premiership the index increased
from 92 to a peak of 131 before finally declining to 128 at the end of her term. From 1987 under New Labour
it rose to 138, the highest gap ever.
Margaret Thatcher’s housing policies, gave many people on moderate incomes the chance to buy their
homes. However her policy of preventing local authorities from building affordable housing, continued by
New Labour, greatly contributed to poverty and homelessness. Now there are over 1.67m households on
the waiting list for affordable housing, an increase of 64 percent since 1997. Over 600,000 of these
households are living in temporary, unsuitable accommodation. Around 150,000 private sector homes have
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