THE Treasury must not be distracted from tackling Britain’s huge economic inequalities by a blip in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, experts said today.

Researchers revealed the sharpest decline in billionaires residing in Britain in the list’s 37-year history — from 165 in 2024 to 156 this year.

The Labour government abolished non-dom tax status in April, which applied to residents of this country whose permanent home or domicile for tax purposes is outside Britain.

List complier Robert Watts said that he had been “struck by the strength of criticism for Rachel Reeves’s Treasury” when speaking to wealthy individuals for the publication.

However, think tank the High Pay Centre said that the small drop in the number of billionaires this year “should not distract from the longer-term trend whereby a tiny handful of very rich people have captured an increasing share of the country’s wealth.”

Executive director Luke Hildyard said: “The Rich List is a useful annual reminder of the inefficiency of the UK economy.

“It shows a small fall in the value of oligarch assets this year, but over a longer period it illustrates how a tiny handful of very rich people have captured an increasing share of the country’s wealth.

“If the super-rich and the companies they own were taxed more effectively and paid the people that work for them a better wage, living standards in Britain would be much higher.

“Meanwhile, the Rich List entrants would still be extremely rich by any reasonable person’s definition and well rewarded for whatever success they have achieved.

“It’s naive to pretend that taxing or limiting billionaire wealth would be easy, but equally such extreme concentration of income and wealth is very obviously not sensible or efficient and policymakers should surely be a lot more energetic in trying to do something about it.”

The Rich List also revealed that the King’s personal wealth has jumped to equal that of former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty.

Charles III’s wealth grew by £30 million to £640m, making him richer than his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

The £370m fortune she left him was exempt from inheritance tax.