Richest one per cent of Scots holds more wealth than whole of bottom half combined

Oxfam now calculates that last year 61 individuals owned the same as half of the whole world - as recently as 2009 the figure was 380.

The wealth gap is also staggeringly wide in Scotland, as revealed in the charity’s report, Reward Work, Not Wealth, which shows that the richest one per cent of Scots holds more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent combined.

Dr Katherine Trebeck, Oxfam’s Glasgow-based senior researcher, said the world’s vast and ever increasing wealth gap “isn’t a faraway crisis”.

She said. “It’s grimly apparent that the inequality crisis is out of control. The economic system is set up in a way that enables a wealthy elite to accumulate vast wealth at the expense of hundreds of millions of people who are scraping a living on poverty pay.”

The charity said that as a new billionaire is created somewhere in the world every two days, the increasingly untenable global crisis is being driven by high-level cronyism, monopolies, unfair tax policies and tax avoidance which are leaving millions condemned to a life of poverty.

Oxfam has previously identified the role of tax dodging in driving inequality. This year its report highlights how the excessive corporate influence on policy-making, erosion of workers’ rights and relentless drive to minimise costs in order to maximise returns to investors all contribute to a widening gap between the super-rich and the rest.

Oxfam said tax avoidance by businesses and wealthy individuals is estimated to cost developing countries and poor regions $170 billion a year - money that could be used to fight poverty and provide public services.

In the UK, the charity is urging the government to help fight tax dodging by using its upcoming Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill to ensure that Britain’s overseas territories publish the owners of companies incorporated on their shores. The Paradise Papers revealed the key role that UK-linked tax havens such as Bermuda play in facilitating global tax avoidance.

The Oxfam report also shows that billionaire wealth rose by an average of 13 percent a year between 2006 and 2015 - six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers.

Last year world’s 2,043 billionaires’ fortunes soared by £585 billion – enough to bring an end to extreme poverty more than seven times over.

And it takes just four days for a CEO of one of the world’s five biggest fashion retailers to earn as much as a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her entire lifetime.

Women consistently earn less than men and are concentrated in the lowest-paid, least-secure forms of work. At current rates of change it will take 217 years to close the global gap in pay and employment opportunities between women and men.

Oxfam said it had heard from women in Vietnamese garment factories whose low wages force them to live apart from their children, women in the US poultry industry who wear nappies because they are denied toilet breaks, and women working in hotels in Canada and the Dominican Republic who stay silent about sexual harassment for fear of being fired.

The charity condemned the situation as “unacceptable” and said it was “unsustainable for economies to continue to enable a super-rich minority to accumulate vast wealth while hundreds of millions of people struggle to survive on poverty pay” and called for a rethink of legal and business models that prioritise shareholder returns over broader social impact.

A new survey of 70,000 people in ten countries, including the UK, demonstrates huge support for action to tackle inequality. Nearly two-thirds of people - 72 per cent in the UK - say they want their government to urgently address the income gap between rich and poor in their country.

In the UK, when asked what a typical British CEO earned in comparison to an unskilled worker, people guessed 33 times as much. When asked what the ideal ratio should be, they said 7:1. In some sectors the reality can be very different. FTSE 100 bosses, for example, earn on average 120 times more than the average employee.

Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB Chief Executive, said: “Something is very wrong with a global economy that allows the one percent to enjoy the lion’s share of increases in wealth while the poorest half of humanity miss out. The concentration of extreme wealth at the top is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of hard-working people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food.

“The world has made huge strides forward in ending poverty but progress could be even faster if we did more to break down the barriers that are holding back the world’s poorest people. For work to be a genuine route out of poverty we need to ensure that ordinary workers receive a living wage and can insist on decent conditions, and that women are not discriminated against. If that means less for the already wealthy then that is a price that we - and they - should be willing to pay.

“Leaders should ensure that wealthy individuals and businesses pay their fair share of tax by cracking down on tax avoidance, and invest this into essential services like schools and hospitals, and creating jobs for young people.”

Mr Goldring added: “Many leaders say they’re worried about the corrosive effect of inequality but their tough talk too often fades away at the first resistance. Some companies and wealthy individuals are taking steps towards fairer ways of doing business but too many others use their power to protect their own interests. To really transform our economies, we need to look again at the business models and laws that prioritise shareholder returns above wider social benefit.”

In Scotland, the 10 richest families or individuals were last year estimated to have a combined wealth of £14.7bn.

The Sunday Times annual Rich List placed the Grant-Gordon whisky family as the richest in Scotland, with a fortune of £2.37bn, with Highland Spring owner Mahdi al-Tajir listed as having an overall fortune of £1.67bn.

Oil industry leader Sir Ian Wood and family are said to be worth £1.6bn and the Thomson family, owners of publisher DC Thomson, £1.285bn.

Meanwhile, around 430,000 Scots were paid less than the living wage of £8.45 per hour last year, with women outnumbering men by about 100,000.

More than one quarter of a million Scots children – working out at one in four – are officially recognised as living in poverty.