Is Britain now a more equal society?

Taking up the challenge made by Peter Mandelson in 1997 to judge the Labour Government in ten years time on their equalities record, centre-left pressure group Compass has launched a new report examining progress on a range of social policy areas. The report “Closer to equality? Assessing New Labour’s record on equality after ten years in government”, features expert contributions from amongst others Professor Danny Dorling; Child Poverty Action Group; Dr Katherine Rake, the TGWU and the NUT.
The report’s headlines show that on:

  • Health: the main differences in life expectancy between best and worst parts of the UK has grown massively to 9.5 years for women and 12.3 years for men. Inequalities in mortality rates for babies born to working class parents compared to middle class parents have also grown
  • Housing: 1.6 million children, 1 in 7 in Britain, are living in bad housing whilst in the last five years homeowners have on average seen a 78% rise in their asset wealth
  • Race: 67% of ethnic minorities live in the 88 most deprived wards
  • Democracy: the difference in voter turnout between the highest social classes and the lowest is probably wider now than at the time of the abolition of property requirements. At the last general election it had reached 17%
  • Wealth: the share owned by top 1% rose from 17% in 1991 to 24% in 2002, while the bottom 50%’s share fell from 8% to 6% over the same period

The report also finds that progress has been made on child poverty, parental rights and childcare and on rights for gay people.
You can read and comment on the report here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 5:38 pm and is filed under British current affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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