Income Inequality

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, the Government are focused primarily on pursuing the appropriate economic policies to promote sustained economic expansion and higher productivity, including better opportunities for those who have been most disadvantaged, whether it be commitment to the northern powerhouse or the Midlands engine, and the devolution of policies that go with that, particularly skills and education. Those are the policies that are attracting more and more of our policy attention.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says he has data that show inequality reducing. I would very much welcome any submission he intends to make. I can only assume that he is measuring the past few months and that some of the inequality that has been reduced is because assets have dropped in value for the very rich because of the collapse of prices on the FTSE. Let us be absolutely clear: from 2010 onwards, wages were effectively frozen in this country as there were no pay rises at all for workers. I cannot understand how the Minister can suggest that the Government have been pursuing policies of reducing inequality.

[Lord O'Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, it is very dangerous to goad someone with my background about data, but there are considerable and widespread data on these matters published completely independently of the Government. In fact, the data show that the so-called Gini coefficient, which is one of the widely accepted global measures of inequality, has been showing a slow decline in British inequality since the mid-1980s, as I said earlier, both at the disposable income level and before disposable income.