Richest Britons piling up their wealth

Accumulating 3 times faster than poorest

LONDON, Dec 18, (RTRS): The richest Britons are accumulating wealth three times as fast as the poorest, according to new official data likely to heighten concerns Britain is becoming an increasingly unequal society.

For the richest tenth of British households, total wealth including pensions increased by 21 percent between 2012 and 2014. For the bottom half of all households, total wealth rose by just 7 percent during that period, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday.

As in many other countries, inequality is a hot political topic in Britain, which is still feeling the effects from the 2008-09 recession, the worst in many decades.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party points to record levels of employment and the fastest growth among developed economies as proof that living standards are improving across the country.

But opposition parties say the poorest are shouldering the biggest burden from government plans to eliminate the deficit, largely through big cuts to welfare spending.

Total household wealth rose 18 percent to 11.1 trillion pounds ($16.6 trillion) between 2012 and 2014, much of it driven through rising private pension holdings, the ONS said.

The figures showed the distribution of wealth was skewed sharply towards the richest, with the most affluent tenth of households controlling some 45 percent of all wealth. The bottom tenth accounted for less than 1 percent.

A separate survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development on Friday further emphasised the sense of worsening inequality among Britons.

Seven out of 10 British employees believe the pay of company chief executives is too high, the CIPD said, with most saying this demotivates them at work.

A concentration of wealth around London has long been a defining feature of BRUSSELS, Dec 18, (RTRS): Euro zone leaders will ask their finance ministers on Friday to quickly complete their banking union, but at the insistence of Germany they will not say directly what that could mean: the setting up of a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS).

Draft conclusions of the EU summit under way in Brussels showed that a reference in an earlier version to a “gradual introduction of a European Deposit Insurance Scheme” has been removed.

Instead, there is a more vague reference to finishing work on the banking union.

“Work should rapidly advance as regards... the Banking Union, to enhance financial stability in the euro area,” said the latest version of the conclusions, to be adopted by EU leaders later on Friday.

The European Union’s banking union is a project open to all 28 EU countries, but only the 19 countries sharing the euro have signed up for it.

It means that all major euro zone banks have the same supervisor - the European Central Bank - and the same rules on what happens if they go bust. There is also a single fund to cover the cost of such a resolution.

The only missing part of the banking

Britain’s economy, and the official wealth data showed little sign of that changing.

Households in London enjoyed the biggest rise in median household wealth, increasing 14 percent between 2012 and 2014, followed closely by Scottish households where there was a big increase in pension wealth.