Archbishop Welby should spend more time saving his Church from extinction — and rather less copying Corbyn

THE Archbishop of Canterbury is a decent and well- intentioned man. Justin Welby is intelligent, too, and knows about money, having worked in the oil industry before becoming a priest.

Nor is there any question that lots of people in our society feel left behind, or in common parlance ‘marginalised’. How else can one explain the astounding success of Jeremy Corbyn despite his obvious weaknesses?

Moreover, as a man of God, Mr Welby has every right to represent the poor, as indeed he should. Jesus Christ spent far more time with the dispossessed than with the rich and powerful.

So I’ve no quarrel with the Archbishop for speaking up on behalf of those who have no voice. But I’m afraid he is very unwise to have associated himself with a controversial and, I believe, often wrong-headed economic report.

The Institute for Public Policy Research is a Left-leaning think-tank which has published a study that claims Britain’s economy is broken. It recommends sweeping measures, most of which would be warmly commended by Corbyn, though one or two might be too radical even for him.

My chief objection to Mr Welby’s involvement in this enterprise — and he has become its virtual spokesman, defending it on TV and in an article in yesterday’s Mail — is that clerics should keep out of the nitty-gritty of politics.

I hope that if he had co-authored a report for the Right-wing Adam Smith Institute or the Centre for Policy Studies I would say exactly the same thing. Clergymen should not promulgate specific policies like politicians.

The main reason is that to do so is divisive. Justin Welby is head of the Church of England, which as our established church retains a national role. He should be wary of dividing people along party political lines.

MORE deeply, many look to the Church not for secular advice but for spiritual enlightenment. I attend an Anglican church in which the priest never mentions politics. A visitor couldn’t begin to guess which party he voted for.

But that is unusual in the modern Church of England, which over recent decades has become increasingly Left-wing. It has also lost hundreds of thousands of worshippers.

The Archbishop is very much the modern churchman. Friends say he is deeply spiritual, yet this may not be obvious to those who watch him pontificating on politics and economics.

In associating himself with so many ideas redolent of Labour, he has arguably strayed even farther than the controversial 1985 Anglican report Faith in the City, which offered an excoriating (and largely unjust) critique of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies.

Admittedly, parts of the Institute for Public Policy Research report could be welcomed by almost anyone. Its proposed new levy aimed at multinationals accused of avoiding tax — such as Amazon and Starbucks — is long overdue.

But there is much that is not sensible. It recommends a bigger role for unions in running businesses. (Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC, is one of the overwhelmingly Left-wing authors.) Does anyone seriously believe our self- serving unions could be trusted to take on such responsibilities?

The report also advocates increasing the corporation tax paid by UK companies — as does Jeremy Corbyn. Yet in recent years, as corporation tax has been reduced, tax receipts have soared. They grew from £44 billion in 2014-15 to £58 billion in 2017-18.

Higher corporation tax might produce a smaller — not larger — tax take, which would have to be made up by already hardpressed income taxpayers. And it would probably lead to increased unemployment (which now stands at a 40-year low), as companies came under pressure.

In other words, ordinary taxpayers, about whom Mr Welby and his co-authors say they care, might turn out to be the casualties of policies supposed to help them.

Then there is the proposal to abolish inheritance tax and replace it with a ‘lifetime gifts tax’ on gifts of over £125,000 per recipient. This is designed to clobber the very rich, who can avoid inheritance tax at present by bequeathing assets more than seven years before their death.

But it is not at all clear that what sounds like a fiendishly complex system would favour less well- off people, who can leave a £ 325,000 tax- free bequest at present, or £650,000 for a couple.

Even more controversial are the uses to which this new tax, and stiffer taxes on capital acquisitions and dividends, would be put. The report foresees a massive new £90 billion Citizens Wealth Fund.

This would be used to give 25-year-olds a £10,000 ‘universal minimum inheritance’, which could be thrown away in an instant. All citizens might be provided with a small annual dividend.

It’s all pie in the sky, of course, and will remain so unless Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister — which is why we must take this report seriously.

The price for such reckless largesse would be higher taxes for hard-working people, who already feel they are taxed enough. Some 10 per cent of top earners pay 60 per cent of all income tax. Nearly half of Britons pay no income tax.

AT THE centre of this report there is a fashionable misconception, repeated uncritically by Justin Welby, that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. But actually the statistics do not bear out this contention.

Earlier this year, the Department for Work and Pensions produced figures which showed that in 2017, a million fewer people were living in absolute poverty — defined as earning less than 60 per cent of the average wage.

The figure fell from 9.9 million to 8.9 million over the period since 2010. Still too high, of course, but not quite what the Institute for Public Policy Research and others on the Left would like you to believe. Meanwhile, according to the Office for National Statistics, between 2008 and 2017 the average disposable income of the poorest fifth of UK households rose by 15 per cent, while that of the richest fifth grew by just 0.4 per cent.

The International Monetary Fund even noted last year that the UK tax system is good at reducing inequalities, and does this better than Denmark, Sweden or Finland.

Only a fool would deny the difficulties of the people ‘just about managing’, invoked by Theresa May when she became Prime Minister in 2016. But the picture of a widening gap between rich and poor is not an accurate one.

Surely the one thing we don’t need is an economy that is taxed even more highly, in which hard-working people are required to pay even more.

Is that really what Justin Welby wants? I can’t believe most congregations in the Church of England do. But as a rather privileged man — the occupant of a fine palace in London and pleasant lodgings in Canterbury — he may be rather cut off.

The Institute for Public Policy Research is entitled to its views, however flawed. But as Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby should not publicly champion them.

I don’t doubt his integrity or sincerity. I respect him as the leader of my Church. But I wish he would devote more time in saving it from extinction, and less time trying to emulate Jeremy Corbyn.