Wednesday 3 July 2019: Today we are going to the core of the core of the Real Agenda, extreme economic and social inequality and the resultant hardship that means 14 million people in the UK live in poverty. Surely we have a moral responsibility to ensure that everyone in our country has a decent standard of living.
On this show we look for answers about what can be done and where better to look than an organization that works to improve the quality of life in the UK by reducing economic and social inequality. Wanda VWyporska is the Executive Director of The Equality Trust which campaigns for changes that could have significant impact in reducing inequality at a national, local and individual level and it advocates a range of policies.
The Equality Trust and its great work have impressed me ever since I first went to their offices 5 years ago. I also had the pleasure of having lunch in York with co founder Richard Wilkinson, just after my own book From Here To Prosperity was published. Richard was the co author with Kate Pickett of the definitive work The Spirit Level which clearly showed that levels of inequality was directly correlated to undesirable social outcomes and that greater equality was better for everyone.
Wanda has over a decade of experience working in the trade union movement, leading on equalities, social mobility and education policy and is an experienced campaigner. She is a regular keynote speaker and sits on or has advised a range of bodies, She regularly comments in the media, having appeared on Newsnight, BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze, Sky News, and BBC 1's The Big Questions and now The Real Agenda. She studied at Oxford and was awarded a doctorate in European History and subsequently published her first book in 2013, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800, Hmm, really, I think that is the subject for another show.
I have met up with Wanda on a number of occasion and today we are at the Equality Trust office in the same week when she was to go to Geneva to speak at the launch of the full report from Philip Alston, the UN special Rapporteur entitled Poverty in the United Kingdom, Human rights under threat
I started by asking Wanda to give us an update on the poor state of Inequality in the UK today.