UK Billionaires' Wealth Jumps £11bn as Poverty Engulfs One in Five

The staggering wealth of Britain's billionaires has surged by a colossal £11 billion in just one year, a new report reveals, as millions of ordinary citizens continue to struggle with a punishing cost of living. The findings from charity Oxfam, published to coincide with the annual gathering of the global elite in Davos, paint a stark picture of an ever-widening economic chasm.

The Great British Wealth Divide

According to Oxfam's research, the combined fortunes of the UK's wealthiest individuals grew by the equivalent of more than £30 million every single day over the past year. This dramatic increase means that just 56 UK billionaires now hold as much wealth as the poorest 27 million people in the country combined.

This ballooning of billionaire wealth comes against a grim backdrop for the wider population. A separate report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that in 2022/23, more than one in five people in the UK – 14.3 million individuals – were living in poverty. This total included 8.1 million working-age adults, 4.3 million children, and 1.9 million pensioners.

A Global Trend of Soaring Fortunes

The concentration of wealth at the very top is not confined to Britain. Oxfam's data shows the combined net worth of the world's billionaires has hit a record £13.6 trillion, following a near £1.9 trillion surge in the last year alone.

The charity warns that this economic power is increasingly translating into political and media influence, with implications for civil rights and democracy worldwide. It claims that billionaires now own more than half of the world's largest media companies and control major social media platforms like Meta and X, owned by Elon Musk, the world's richest person with a fortune exceeding £530 billion.

Oxfam links a 16% surge in global billionaire wealth since last year to what it calls former US President Donald Trump's "pro-billionaire agenda," citing deregulation and tax policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy.

Consequences and Calls for Change

Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, stated: "The wealth of the super-rich has shot up because the stock market and corporate profits have surged. This in turn is driven in part by the actions of the Trump administration."

Sonya Sultan, the charity’s chief influencing officer for the UK, highlighted growing public discontent: "Most people do not want a world dominated by billionaires. Rising protests globally shows people are rejecting a system rigged in favour of a few... In the UK now a clear majority of people favour a wealth tax."

The report underscores the extreme daily reality of this divide: the average UK billionaire saw their wealth grow by £231 million in the past year. Oxfam calculates that it would take less than the duration of a football match for them to gain more wealth than an average UK worker earns in an entire year.

UK’s Top 10 Richest Billionaires (Forbes Data):