Daily View: Inequality report assessed

Clare Spencer|10:17 UK time, Thursday, 28 January 2010

block of flats Commentators consider the merits of the government's National Equality Panel report which revealed the gap between rich and poor has widened since the 1970s.

The Independent's leading article says the panel did not tell us anything we did not already know, and asks what this means for the election:

"Sensible governments harness the wealth - creating power of free markets to pull us all - as a society - in the right direction. The challenge for all three parties in the run-up to the election is to convince us that they understand this and that they possess the policies to achieve it."

The Telegraph editorial calls the government "brazen" for the report:

"This paints a suitably lurid picture of Britain as a divided society, in which the gulf between rich and poor is wider than ever. Proof, proclaims Miss Harman, that new laws - her laws - are needed to right this wrong.
In fact, it is not new laws we require from Miss Harman, but an apology."

Lesley Riddoch in the Guardian says the only good news for Equalities Minister Harriet Harman is on gender:

"Whichever way you look at it, the National Equality Panel report makes shocking reading. But some will try to spot a crumb of comfort in the relative narrowing of the gender income gap."

Tom Clark in the Guardian questions whether the data in the report is skewed, making the gap between rich and poor appear bigger than it is:

"Those with zero or near-zero incomes have in the past been shown to have bigger houses, spend more money, pay more tax and do more work than people who are apparently slightly less poor. In sum, it seems as if those recorded as the poorest are not truly poor at all."

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail launches an attack on Harriet Harman's "social engineering," which he says has increased inequality and focused wrongly on class:

"The educational chasm is the one that matters, and Labour's social engineers bear an overriding responsibility for it.
Until state schools revive the cult of excellence, until teachers are obliged to teach and pupils to learn, the underclass will indeed remain tragic victims - of Harmanism, not social discrimination."

Harry Phibbs in the Daily Mail says poverty is more important than equality:

"Growing inequality would not matter if we were all getting much richer. What this report shows is something far more damning. On several measures the poor under Labour have not merely made slower progress than the rich. They have made no progress at all. Defeating poverty is the key objective rather than defeating inequality. Labour has failed to defeat either."

Labour MP Tom Harris argues in his blog that the increased gap between rich and poor is due to a few people becoming astronomically rich, increasing relative poverty:

"Faced with such an imbalance, how can any government try to narrow that inequality gap? By taxing the rich more and giving large cheques through the benefits system to the less well off? Well, yes, you could do that, even though it would be insane. But don't let that put you off. Yet it will simply not be possible for any government of any persuasion to reverse that inequality unless they impose really punitive taxes on the riches in our country."

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