UK Inequality: The question of whether Britain is becoming fairer depends on who you ask

There will be few people who, noticing the title of a new report, Is Britain Fairer?, believe they do not already know the answer. The growth of inequality has become an accepted fact in much political discourse. But, as a new report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission makes clear, the traffic is not entirely one way.

Overall income inequality – often taken as the defining metric of fairness – in fact fell slightly between 2008 and 2013, according to the Gini coefficient, the measure used to compare the equality of societies worldwide.

That might raise a cheer in Conservative headquarters. Two weeks ago at Prime Minister’s Questions David Cameron denied claims that his party has overseen a rise in inequality. But the picture is far from rosy, taken as a whole. The EHRC provides the most comprehensive indication thus far that, for some groups, the years since the recession have taken a particular social toll. More of the young fell into poverty over the five-year period covered in the report. The white working class has suffered too, in particular poor white boys, and the average pay of a black worker has fallen by £1.20 an hour. The elderly have benefited over the same period, as is well known – no doubt following the Conservatives’ calculation that support for this demographic would proffer rewards come election time.

There appears to be little chance that the “losers” of the past five years will see their fortunes change significantly under this Government. Tory housing policy is particularly unsympathetic to those young people who do not have a high-paying job, or the good fortune of parents able to help them on to the property ladder. Help to Buy aids only those who do have such things (and then makes houses even more unaffordable for everyone else), while the revamped Right to Buy will further deplete the stock of council homes available.

Is Britain fairer? It depends who you ask.