Rachel Reeves has been urged by a coalition of leading economists, green campaigners, millionaires, fuel poverty groups and a union to introduce a wealth tax at the budget on 30th October.
In an open letter to the chancellor, the collective said a wealth tax was necessary to “reduce the stark inequalities in this country and help raise the vital funds needed to ensure that the transition to a greener, cleaner, more prosperous future is fair for everyone at home and abroad”.
Prominent economists Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and Gabriel Zucman, associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, are among the letter’s signatories.
Piketty and Zucman have been joined by 28 other organisations — including Greenpeace, Oxfam, and the Patriotic Millionaires — in calling on Reeves to introduce a wealth tax on the assets of the super-rich to reduce inequalities and fund measures to help tackle the climate crisis.
The coalition, which also includes Britain’s second biggest union, Unite, the National Pensioners Convention and the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, highlights that the government’s decision to cut winter fuel payments will leave up to 2 million pensioners struggling with their bills.
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The letter also points to a speech made by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in August in which he said that those with the “broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden.”
Reeves has since repeated this view, telling the New Statesman’s NS podcast last week that people should be in “no doubt when we do the budget that those with the broadest shoulders will be bearing the largest burden.”
It comes as a new report from Greenpeace UK has found that a new temporary 2.5 per cent tax on all individual wealth above £10 million could generate a minimum of £130 billion in revenue for the government over the next five years. The move would impact fewer than 75,000 people, it is said.
The open letter reads: “The richest 250 families in the UK sit on a combined wealth of £748bn; 1% of Britons hold more wealth than 70% of us; and the carbon footprint of the richest 0.1% is 12 times bigger than the average person in the UK.”
The letter adds: “There is more than enough money to pay to fix our public services, our economy, tackle the climate crisis and more.”
Georgia Whitaker, UK climate campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “How can the government think that taxing the vast wealth of the very richest in our society is more controversial than cutting winter fuel payments to poor pensioners? These aren’t ‘difficult decisions’, these are political choices, and it’s time the Chancellor made the right one.
“By tapping into just a fraction of the wealth of a few thousand multi-millionaires and billionaires — who are also frequently the biggest polluters — we can pay for climate solutions benefitting millions.”
Caire Peden, Organiser at Unite, said: “We need serious investment in our crippled public services and in industry to ensure a prosperous future for Britain’s workers and their communities. We are fed up with ordinary people bearing the brunt of austerity, we are fed up watching the government and the profiteers pick the pockets of pensioners, so, it’s time to rebalance the books. We won’t get the money needed, just by waiting for growth.
“This is why Unite welcomes the groundswell that is forming to demand we tax the super-rich to pay for public services and invest in jobs and the economy.”
Ahead of the budget however, the chancellor has effectively ruled out any wealth tax. In a recent interview with the BBC, Reeves said: “We’re not going to be bringing in a wealth tax, but there will be a number of difficult decisions around tax and spending and welfare.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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