Poverty and inequality are critically linked. Poverty occurs when sections of society have insufficient resources to be able to afford a minimal acceptable contemporary living standard. Its scale is ultimately determined by, as the key architect of post-war prosperity, John Maynard Keynes, put it, on how the ‘cake is cut’. History cannot be clearer: high levels of poverty and inequality have gone hand in hand. It is no coincidence that over the last four decades, poverty levels have more than doubled, while the share of national income accruing to the top one per cent has surged.

Read the article by Stewart Lansley