Queues outside food banks grow longer as rich get richer in Britain

It is one of the favourite questions journalists ask politicians, to check if they are really engaged with the realities of everyday life: ‘Do you know the price of a pint of milk?’ Not every prime minister, minister or leader asked this question – or a variant of it: the price of bread or fuel – gets it right. Some squirm live on air and trip, like former US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, or the former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. But Dominic Raab, deputy prime minister, who has often been the subject of sharp words from political sketch writers and columnists, got it right on BBC Breakfast the other day, and in fact turned the tables by asking the presenter if he knew the price of unleaded petrol.

Raab is one of the rare politicians to pass the ‘pint of milk’ test, but many in Britain today believe that his government is not as engaged with the realities of the ever-rising cost of living, now widely described as a ‘crisis’. Billions of pounds of new funding have been allocated to deal with the rising energy, food and other prices, but the scale of the crisis in one of the world’s richest countries is such that ministers admit that not everyone will benefit from the funding.

Walking along the High Street in East Ham recently I was struck by a long queue that wound long into a side road. Standing in queues may seem to come naturally to the Brits, but this one looked different: it was diverse, included entire families, waiting patiently, the queue moving along slowly. They were waiting before a ‘food bank’, a place where food parcels and other essential items are given away for free to families struggling to meet basic needs, reflecting the growing phenomenon of urban poverty and economic inequality in Britain. There are over 2,000 such food banks across Britain; the Trussell Trust, a charity organisation that opened its first food bank in 2000, operates over half of them. The Covid-19 pandemic has also led to an increase in food bank usage, particularly among families with children.

This context of deprivation stands in sharp contrast with the latest listing of The Sunday Times Rich List, which included, for the first time, Chancellor Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murthy (placed at number 222). The recent row over Murthy’s tax status and Sunak receiving a fixed penalty notice from the police for partying in Downing Street may have eviscerated his chances to be the next prime minister (to the glee of some in the ruling party), but the larger picture presented by the rich list is stark. The 250 richest people in the United Kingdom include a record 177 billionaires. Overall, the richest individuals and families are worth £711 billion, an 8 per cent rise on last year’s £658 billion, which comes amid the growing cost of living crisis, with UK inflation rising sharply to 9 per cent in the year to April.

The top 10 richest families and individuals, the estimated value of their fortunes and the primary source of their wealth are: Sri and Gopi Hinduja and family - £28.47 billion (industry and finance), James Dyson and family - £23 billion (household goods and technology), David and Simon Reuben and family- £22.26 billion (property and internet), Leonard Blavatnik - £20 billion (investment, music and media), Guillaume Pousaz- £19.259 billion (online payments), Lakshmi Mittal and family - £17 billion (steel), Guy, George, Alannah and Galen Weston and family - £13.5 billion (retailing), Kirsten and Jorn Rausing - £12 billion (inheritance and investment), Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and Michel de Carvalho - £11.42 billion (inheritance, brewing and banking), Michael Platt (£10 billion). The rich clearly got richer during the pandemic, but there is also a section of the millionaires set who have been petitioning the government to tax them more.

Britain has one of the largest charity sectors – the Oxford historian Frank Prochaska believes that “no country can lay a greater claim to a philanthropic tradition than Britain” – but the pandemic also took a toll on giving for charity. There are over 170,000 charity organisations in England and Wales; over 90 per cent of them took a hit, reporting dwindling income. Contrast the growing wealth of those in the rich list with the total giving in charity in pre-pandemic times: the charities had a combined annual income of over £84.1 billion and £82.3 billion of charity spend. Funds are also raised for charity in various countries, including in south Asia, while a large number of individuals raise millions of pounds for various causes through online platforms, including on issues related to the pandemic – the annual charity income may well be closer to £100 billion, much below what is needed to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.

There are vast economic inequalities between prosperous London/south-east England and the rest of the country, particularly the north of England. Recent research across sectors shows that Britain is an unequal country, more so than many other industrial countries and more so than a generation ago. This is manifest in many ways, most obviously in the gap between those who are well off and those who are less well off. One of the key popular programmes of the Boris Johnson government is what is called ‘levelling up’ the country; there is also a Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Its white paper on the subject admits the inequalities, that there is a concentration of economic growth and higher productivity in south-east England, and promises a range of initiatives to ‘level up’ the country. “Levelling up is a mission to challenge, and change, that unfairness”, it says, but recent global energy headwinds, inflation, Ukraine-Russia conflict, the pandemic and other challenges may have made that mission that much harder, while queues outside food banks continue to grow longer and rich continue to get richer.

The writer is a senior journalist based in the UK