As both a doctor and an MP, the casework that my team and I deal with is overwhelmingly concerned with people who are poor.
Most of them were born poor, lived in relative poverty all their lives, and will die poor, simply because they were born in the wrong postcode.
On average, there is a 10 year difference in life expectancy from the most deprived to least deprived areas. It is a fallacy that you can simply ‘get on’ in life if you work hard enough.
We live in an unequal society. In the UK, the richest 50 families hold more wealth than half of the population and they keep getting richer. In 1990, there were 15 billionaires in the UK – there are now 156. This exponential growth in wealth coupled with deepening inequality is a stain on our society. It tends to be the case that those with the most wealth manage to hang on to it – which makes it harder than ever to try and shift the dial.
Some organisations argue that we need to tackle this through looking at the ratios between the highest and lowest paid employees in a company. The average ratio in a large corporation is, depending on how you calculate it, around 80:1, meaning that if the lowest paid employee is earning £20,000, then the CEO is earning £1.6m. Of course, in the financial sector, the reality is that these rates are much higher.
I have read different arguments about how best to tackle this, with some arguing for a ratio of 10:1, or more suggesting 20:1. I can understand that, in a global economy, taking the initiative on this would be, at best, difficult, but it seems like a good way to start thinking about the problem.
The government’s investment in the Living Wage in April is really good – but I do think we need to do something with those at the other end of the spectrum.
We seem to be able to grasp the immorality of lower pay – but I think that there is a similar immorality at the other end of the spectrum. We need fair pay, not a free for all. A society that tolerates such disparity is not just unequal, it is unjust.
