The Green Party has urged Keir Starmer to acknowledge “deafening” calls by introducing a wealth tax on the super rich.
Green co-leader Carla Denyer said a “small tax on the wealth” could raise billions to fund public services, like the NHS.
Her comments come after it was revealed the UK’s richest 50 families have more wealth than 50 per cent of the population.
The MP for Bristol Central said: “Calls for a wealth tax are becoming deafening and it’s time for the government to listen. Putting in place a small tax on the wealth of multimillionaires and billionaires, and equalising capital gains tax with income tax, could help raise the billions so desperately needed to properly fund our public services.
“With Labour’s fiscal plans in shambles after their misguided attempts to balance the books on the backs of the poorest backfired, it’s time for Starmer and Reeves to take their heads out of the sand and start looking at the obvious solution: making our tax system fairer.”
New research has learnt the 50 richest families in the UK amassed more wealth than the poorest half of the country, which is around 34 million people.
Priya Sahni-Nicholas, co-executive director of the Equality Trust, told The Guardian: “Our analysis also shows the vampiric nature of extreme wealth, which is completely incompatible with the health and wellbeing of the nation.
“Property, inheritance and finance account for over half of total billionaire current wealth: sources of wealth creation that are responsible for large-scale planetary and community destruction.
“The obscene growth in wealth of the UK’s richest is due to them profiting from society’s struggles while causing them additional harm and undermining successive governments’ goals of decarbonisation, spreading more wealth and growth out of London, ending the housing crisis, encouraging the growth of new – and frequently greener – industries, and encouraging stronger communities.
“The issue of extreme wealth really is existential; for our very survival we need to get serious about changing economic structures and design policies that end the existence of billionaires.”