Multimillionaires wealth has grown incredibly – we need a wealth tax – Brian Leishman MP
By Brian Leishman MP
From the outset, let us be blunt. Under the current leadership, the Labour Party’s commitment to redistributing power and wealth in government has been, diluted.
In Treasury Questions, the Chancellor and her ministerial team point to non-dom status being replaced and the scrapping of tax relief and the imposition of VAT for private schools as their efforts at making “those with the broadest shoulders” pay their share.
While I agree with the Chancellor’s actions on these issues, it really is the bare minimum the government could and should do.
The truth is that the monies raised by these actions will not come remotely close to go about equalising society and making Britain a genuinely fairer place.
Whether the governments timidity in going about trying to make society more equal is down to a lack of political ability or whether it is against our Cabinet’s political ideology is a debate for another article.
But what is undeniable is that over the last decade and a half Britain has become an incredibly unequal society.
The 2010s have been, accurately, described as the decade that the rich won. As every accountant knows, what goes in the credit column, there must also be an entry in the debit side too.
In 2010, 30,000 people needed an emergency food parcel to get by but now, that figure is over 3,000,000 people, and rising. Nearly 80 per cent of people reliant on foodbanks to survive, are in work.
While the very richest, the multi-millionaire class benefited from tax cuts and their wealth growing at incredible rates, we saw the creation of a new strata of society – the in-work poor.
It is utterly preposterous that in the sixth largest economy in the world that people on full time wages are depending on the generosity of others, donated food and other supplies to community and nationwide organisations, in order to survive.
The politics of austerity have largely contributed to this awful set of living circumstances and gross inequality, and nothing sums that up more than the dire state of our nation’s health – the difference between the life expectancy of the richest and the poorest is 13 years in Scotland.
Of course, it is not just austerity that has immiserated communities. We also had a global pandemic that has contributed to wealth inequality.
The wealthiest saw their fortunes grow while ordinary people had to spend more of their reduced income on the essentials required to live.
And if austerity and a pandemic were not bad enough, we then had, and still have, corporations making obscene profits at the public’s expense. This corporate greed being neatly packaged as the “cost of living crisis”.
This crisis is a manufactured set of circumstances that’s dual goal was the accumulation of profit and the ongoing degradation of the British working class.
The fact that it has been allowed to carry on unabated is a damning indictment of our country’s political class.
A decade and a half of suppression to wages with workers being held hostage to zero hours contracts and other methods of exploitation will not be overcome immediately, but to the government’s credit, it has made inroads with the Employment Rights Bill.
But again, like addressing non-doms and private schools’ charitable status, this is just a start.
My Labour colleagues in Parliament need to understand that cuts do not grow the economy. The last decade and a half have proved that.
There is an alternative to austerity.
Let us look at raising revenues.
The introduction of an annual wealth tax of 2% on multi-millionaires with assets over £10 million would generate in the region of £24 billion per annum.
The argument that those with generational wealth will leave the country has been proved for what it is – scaremongering.
The fact is that the vast majority of those people that would be impacted with this tax agree that inequality is out of control.
They agree that they should foot the bill. They agree that everyone should have good public services, an education system that gives opportunity and a health service and welfare system that properly looks after people.
By improving people’s living standards, by providing a well-funded and caring education and welfare system, we can create a more equal society and grow our economy at the same time.
Workers are more productive when they do not stress over making ends meet every day, week and month.
Young people will become more skilled in the world of work if they are allowed to grow up and learn in a supportive and encouraging environment. We need to show them that we can create a brighter future for them, leaving behind a planet that is not headed to a climate catastrophe.
When the Prime Minister said his government must go further and faster he was right, but that must be applied to the redistribution of wealth and power across society.
- Brian Leishman is the MP for Alloa and Grangemouth
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