The Equality Trust has found that the UK’s 50 richest families now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, which comprises more than 34 million people. The analysis, timed to coincide with the Sunday Times rich list, reveals that the number of billionaires in the UK has surged from 15 in 1990 to 165 in 2024, while inequality in overall wealth distribution has dramatically increased.
According to the report, billionaires have become “ludicrously” more wealthy, with their average wealth rocketing by more than 1,000% over the same period. In 2024, the two richest UK billionaires held more wealth between them than all the billionaires on the 1990 rich list combined.
Priya Sahni-Nicholas, co-executive director of the Equality Trust, described the trend as “vampiric” and incompatible with the nation’s health and wellbeing. She noted that property, inheritance and finance account for over half of total billionaire current wealth, sources she said are responsible for large-scale planetary and community destruction. She called for policies to end the existence of billionaires, describing extreme wealth as an existential issue.
Julia Davies, a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, argued that inclusion in the rich list should be a mark of shame. She said that hoovering up wealth into the hands of ever fewer people harms everyone, and criticised the notion that the wealthy are “job creators”, instead calling them “job eradicators” who consolidate businesses and undercut smaller competitors. She also highlighted that the wealthy often pay lower tax rates than working people or small businesses.
Fernanda Balata, a political economist at the New Economics Foundation, said the UK had gone down a route of economic instability, putting the super-wealthy above everyone else. She called for an “Extreme Wealth Line” to define the point at which excessive wealth causes unjustifiable harm. Dr Benjamin Tippet of King’s College London calculated that a 2% wealth tax on those on the rich list, if implemented since the mid-1990s, would have raised about £6bn per year, totalling £155bn, worth approximately £325bn today.
