UK “far from a fair society” warns thinktank
A new report from the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) concludes that the UK is not yet a fair society.
Though it praises Labour’s efforts to tackle child poverty, it concludes that the Government has been “good on poverty but not so good on inequality.”
In 1998 the UK had the highest child poverty rate in the European Union, but in 2001 the UK ranked 11th out of the 15 European Union nations on child poverty.
But the report highlights widening inequality, noting that the percentage of wealth held by the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population has increased from 47 per cent to 54 per cent over the last ten years.
Since 1997 the richest one per cent of the population has increased its share of the national income from six per cent in 1980 to 13 per cent in 1999.
Monday’s “audit of social injustice” is the first part of the ippr’s assessment on how the UK has changed since the 1994 Commission on Social Justice and seeks to influence policy for the next decade.
Its director, Nick Pearce, said: “Despite the boldness of its pledge to eradicate child poverty and the expansion of investment in public services, the Government does not consistently articulate and publicly advocate a fairer, more equal Britain. It has often achieved social justice objectives by stealth. It should now try and do the same for fairness and equality as it has done for public services and shift the terms of political debate.
“The next five years are likely to be politically critical. To achieve firm foundations for a ‘progressive century’, the Government needs to lead public debate more firmly in a progressive direction; to explain, justify and secure support for social justice.”
The report concludes that Britain has become fairer in the last 10 years, highlighting in particular increased employment rates, but warns that: “Parental social class and ethnicity still heavily influence life-chances, whilst democratic participation is falling and political influence is polarising according to class and wealth.”
It argues that “major progress is still needed to transform Britain into a truly prosperous, fair and decent society.”
Key challenges highlighted include the situation of working-age adults without children, a group “unfavoured” by Government policy. In 1994 this group made up 25 per cent of people in poverty, but this rose to 31 per cent in 2003.
Social mobility, a key target for Tony Blair, appears to have declined with people from a professional background remaining over two times as likely to end up as professionals compared with someone from a manual background.
Interest in politics has fallen slightly over all social classes, but the most dramatic decline in interest has been among social classes D and E, whose interest in politics has halved between 1981 and 1999. This group is also least likely to be involved in any form of political activity and the ippr warns that there is “a danger is that political power will be increasingly related to income and the power to pay for change, further shifting the balance away from the poor, disadvantaged and excluded.”
