Just look at Scotland, where the duty was introduced in 2019 and had been interpreted to include low income, low wealth, material deprivation, area deprivation, “communities of interest” and “communities of place”, whatever that means.
Wales followed suit in 2019 with similarly expansive definitions. The effect has not been a transformation in social outcomes, but vastly more paperwork and time-consuming meetings. Councils and health boards devote endless dreary hours at the taxpayers’ expense to drafting impact assessments and considerations of inequality in decisions ranging from procurement to town planning. Britain’s productivity growth remains in dead parrot territory, and the last thing we need is a new cottage industry of inequality auditors.
The empirical case for a renewed crusade against inequality is flimsy. The UK’s Gini coefficient – the most common measure of income inequality – has remained broadly stable in recent years. Britain did become more unequal in the 1980s, but since then inequality has shifted downwards, if anything. Our tax and benefits system already does a substantial amount of redistribution – more than many other European nations.
Before taxes and transfers, the top fifth of households earn 12 times as much as the poorest fifth. After considering income, other personal taxes and the range of benefits that poorer people access, that gap shrinks dramatically to just over three times. The idea peddled by the Left, that our society is indifferent to inequality, is tosh. We already devote enormous resources to mitigating it.
More broadly, SED risks creating tensions within the very public services it seeks to reshape. How are inevitable trade-offs to be resolved? Why should middle-class doctors get larger pay increases than poorer nurses? Or train drivers more than station staff? Trains are used much more by middle-class people, so should fares go up?
And this just scratches the surface. The SED suggests that fairness requires not just equal treatment under the law, but differential treatment based on socioeconomic status. Putting it in no doubt hurty words, those who haven’t contributed to the common pot – or have contributed less than the average – may in future be prioritised in the allocation of limited resources and opportunities. Why should this be considered “fair”?