Parliamentary reporter @TrinderMatt

BRITAIN’S wealth gap has ballooned during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the richest 10 per cent gaining 500 times more than the poorest third, the Resolution Foundation revealed today.

The think tank report found that the overall wealth in the country had increased by £900 billion to more than £16.5 trillion during three national lockdowns due to a lack of spending opportunities and rising house prices.

But the benefits had been massively skewed to the richest by a ratio of more than 500 to 1, “turbo-charging” the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the report warned. 

The think tank pointed out that the poorest households were more likely to have missed out on the house price boom by being renters, while also being forced to burn through what savings they had. 

In contrast, the wealthiest fifth of households were four times as likely to have increased their savings, the report said, meaning the richest 10 per cent of adults now have £1.4m each, while the poorest third pocketed a meagre average of just £86 per adult. 

Tory ministers must now rethink their decision to scrap the £20-a-week increase to universal credit in September or risk plunging hundreds of thousands into even greater poverty, the the think tank said.

Resolution Foundation economist Jack Leslie said: “Rising wealth gaps that marked pre-pandemic Britain have been turbo-charged by the crisis.

“With policymakers facing many tough decisions in the autumn — from protecting households as unemployment rises to paying for a decent system of social care — they can no longer afford to ignore the dominant role wealth is playing in 21st-century Britain.”