Crikey – Oxfam has done a pretty eye-opening bit of research showing that the five richest families in the UK have more wealth among them than the poorest 20% of our population put together.
The five families are those of the Duke of Westminster, the Reuben brothers, the Hiduja brothers, London land-owner Charles Cadogan (the Viscount of Chelsea) and Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley.
Each family has a fortune comfortably into the multi-billions, and together they have a wealth of £28.2bn.
That’s more than the poorest 12.6 million people in the UK combined.
Oxfam’s report says that inequality is increasing and creating a “vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest behind”.
Ben Phillips, Oxfam’s director of campaigns and policy, said: “Britain is becoming a deeply divided nation, with a wealthy elite who are seeing their incomes spiral up, whilst millions of families are struggling to make ends meet.
“It’s deeply worrying that these extreme levels of wealth inequality exist in Britain today, where just a handful of people have more money than millions struggling to survive on the breadline.”
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