The Sunday Times Rich List has come out and there’s wailing and gnashing of the teeth about how the "wealth gap" is becoming a yawning chasm. However, there’s something very dodgy indeed about how they’ve calculated the list:

1. Lakshmi Mittal (steel) £19,250 million
2. Roman Abramovich (oil and industry) £10,800 million
3. The Duke of Westminster (property) £7,000 million
4. Sri and Gopi Hinduja (industry and finance) £6,200 million
5. David Khalili (art and property) £5,800 million
6. Hans Rausing (packaging) £5,400 million
7. Sir Philip and Lady Green (retailing) £4,900 million
8. John Fredriksen (shipping) £3,500 million
9. David and Simon Reuben (metals and property) £3,490 million
10. Jim Ratcliffe (chemicals) £3,300 million.

Now, as is noted, only three of those 10 are British born. I assume that those are numbers 3, 7 and 10. The Reubens I’m pretty sure are not actually based in London, rather, Monaco, as is Lady Green (who actually owns the equity in Arcadia.

As we’re also told the foreign born can live in the UK without  paying much in the way of tax here. That is, that the other 7 are really tax exiles living in the UK. So, if we’re counting tax exiles who have moved here, shouldn’t we not be counting the tax exiles who have left here?

The other thing is that not enough emphasis (to my mind of course, for whatever my opinion is worth) is laid upon the fact that for most of those foreigners living in the UK their money is not actually made in the UK at all. Mittal’s steel is a global empire (I’m not even sure that he owns a single UK plant), Abramovitch is of course all in Russia, the Hindujas India and the Gulf (?), Khalili I know little about, Hans Rausing is Tetra Pak, a global empire, Fredriksen again global (we don’t have much of a shipping industry for him to own after all) and the Reubens were in competition with Abramovitch in the Russian aluminium business.

It’s also true that with one exception, all of them made their money themselves.

But the important point is that for most of them the UK is somewhere to live, not somewhere to exploit or trade in. Which means that the following is somewhat silly:

However, concerns over the increasing gap between
rich and poor have led to a backlash from a holy alliance of church
groups and bishops.

Christian Aid, Cafod, Church
Action on Poverty and the Church Council for Monetary Justice have all
this weekend issued statements asking Chancellor Gordon Brown to close
the legal loopholes used by the super-rich to avoid tax

It
is believed they have the backing of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who has shown concern at how tax breaks enjoyed by an elite
group run contrary to a social justice agenda.

The
International Monetary Fund has officially labelled Britain a tax
haven. Complex rules on residency and domicile status mean the
super-rich from overseas can, as one accountancy expert put it, "avoid
paying virtually any tax in Britain apart from council tax".

As is well known, the rich are more mobile than the rest of us. As indeed some of those born here have shown by moving to Monaco. So the suggestion is that somehow society will be made better by getting more of those rich people to leave the country.

That really doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. Let’s make people who control £49 billion in assets go and live in Monaco. Err, what have we gained?