Inequality in the United Kingdom is growing. The scale and significance of the problem cannot be under estimated. As Oxfam highlighted last week, the United Nations Open Working Group has declared the UK one of the least equal countries in the developed world.

No longer is this simply the discourse of the left and the third sector; everyone from the current Pope, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and the IMF is now warning against the risks of widening economic gaps. David Cameron needs to listen up. Any degree of growth is hugely unstable if inequality is increasing not shrinking.

And yet, the coalition government is offering nothing more than a weak attempt to resuscitate the same economy that failed before. Labour needs to offer an alternative that will fundamentally rebalance it.

The nature of inequality in the UK is so complex that for simplicity’s sake, let me focus for now on three Ws: women, the white working class, and work.

Let us turn first to women. Over a third of the UK’s working women are in low paid, part-time jobs beneath their qualifications. Unleashing women’s full potential could be worth £23bn to the UK economy. A glib statistic perhaps, until you consider that this year’s budget for secondary education was also £23.8bn. Facilitating women’s fuller participation in the labour market could fund a nation’s worth of teachers and school resources.

The economic downturn has not been gender neutral. Women are currently victims of a triple whammy, disproportionately hit on pay, benefits and services. The gender pay gap remains doggedly at 15 per cent, which both cripples spending power, and further confines women to their age-old role of primary carers. The average UK woman depends on benefits for one fifth of their income, compared to one tenth for men, and many women are therefore being pushed to the limit by poor implementation of government changes to the welfare state. Women remain the biggest users of public services, especially in relation to health, personal care and children’s services, and have therefore been hardest hit by cuts to the NHS and local government.

Furthermore, two thirds of the public sector workforce is female, and therefore employment opportunities and wage progression for women has been hugely limited since the age of austerity kicked in in 2010.

And then of course we have the parent trap. Kirsty Allsopp was understandably widely slammed by feminist circles recently for suggesting women procreate first and go to university and have a career second. However, while her solution sent a shiver down the spine of most discerning equality campaigners, she highlights a valid problem, that raising a family and advancing in the workplace in the modern economy, with modern housing and childcare prices, remains an unsquarable circle.

So to the next of my Ws: the white working class. Last week’s education select committee report on school attainment described poor white young people as ‘consistently the lowest performing group in the country.’ Only 31 per cent of white British children who are eligible for free school meals gain five or more GCSEs. It is a shocking fact that in a country as affluent as ours there remains a large demographic of children who are twice as likely to fail than succeed.

Under-achievement in white working-class children begins early. According to Ofsted, half of all infants fail to reach a good level of development by the age of 5. In over fifty local authorities, less than a third of kids reach this level. Children claiming free school meals lag 19 percentage points behind their peers against early learning indicators. In many cases, being born to a white working class background leaves children 18 months behind in their development by the age of 5. Life chances are limited in Britain far too early.

Pensioner poverty and social isolation are also rife if you happen to be white working class. Older people in the UK are among the poorest in Europe, with over two million pensioners living in poverty. While care for older people within the family home is still common practice in Britain’s Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, poor white pensioners are especially likely to live alone without access to social support. Age UK highlights that one million older people go a month or more without seeing or speaking to anybody. Is one of those one million living on your street?

These statistics highlight cycles of increasing economic barriers from generation to generation, alongside stark failures in social mobility. However, as significant as the inequality challenges for white working class people today are, I think there is a further problem: perceptions of inequality.

Over the last decade, a strong narrative of ‘us and them’ has dominated the media, with the excesses of MPs’ expenses, bankers’ bonuses and millionaires’ mansions being steadily pitted against hard times and a cost-of-living crisis for the rest of us. In white working-class communities, this framework of perceived injustice is fast becoming a barrier to equality in itself.

As a councillor I hear it more and more in the way that residents present casework. Rarely is a problem just an isolated problem; there is typically someone better off who is seen as unfairly having it easier. This is often true, but the growing inclination to compare and contrast is perhaps not helpful. There is a controversial American psychologist called Martin Seligman who describes how happiness indicators were high among remote communities in developing countries until the advent of television highlighted the far greater standards of living enjoyed elsewhere. It makes me question whether equality would be better measured on two scales, like crime: equality, and perceptions of equality.

And thus to my final W: work. Gargantuan gaps in wages, stark regional inequalities, and the ‘broken deal’ for young people all contribute to a jagged landscape for workplace equality in the UK. However, I would like to focus on one of the biggest barriers to social mobility: heavily entrenched occupational segregation.

Birth factors such as gender, race and disability still determine your likely occupation in the UK. If you are of Indian origin you are more likely to become a doctor, lawyer or account; if you are a British male graduate of Oriental orientation you are likely to go into an ICT profession. Meanwhile, over 80 per cent of Bangladeshi men work in night time economies such as restaurants and taxi driving. If you are a white working class woman your options are largely limited to the four Cs- caring, cleaning, cashiering and catering (although you could accurately throw hairdressing and the beauty industries into this forecast too). Only 2 per cent of the construction industry and 8 per cent of skilled traders are women, while only 9 per cent of nurses are men. Only 15 per cent of adults with autism, to take just one example from the realm of disability, work full time.

All of this is not just bad for individuals and communities, it is bad for businesses and bad for the UK economy. The economic case for breaking down those deeply entrenched cultural barriers that determine our likely occupation is acute. If we were to shake the rigged pack of cards that pre-ordains who works where in the UK, the benefits that a broader mix of skills and perspectives would unleash could transform us into a truly competitive economy. And yet, we accept that this is how it is. We should re-open the debate.

Labour’s response to rising inequality and the three Ws needs to be long-termist, ambitious and must inspire confidence; confidence that we can, and will, fundamentally change society and reduce inequality.

We need skills strategies that are finely developed and truly regional. The same strategy that works in Kent will not work in Kilmarnock. We need to be embracing emerging markets such as the low carbon industries not just as future profit drivers but as future equality drivers. We have a local manufacturer and typical employer of white working class men who currently makes turbines for oil rigs but could soon adapt to make them to for tidal lagoons. We need more of these stories.

Further still, as the National Policy Forum prepare to meet next month, we need to pledge investment where it really counts. For me, the debate about what to renationalise is the wrong one. If we are digging deep, our priority should be to invest in universal childcare. It would address the women problem, address the school readiness problem, and crucially, it would break the cycle of poverty and inequality which currently threatens to perpetuate beyond our lifetimes.

Finally, Labour needs to improve the way we communicate to ensure that all those affected by inequalities the Tories are worsening – women, the white working class, black and minority ethnic communities, those who live outside London – know we truly are on their side, passionate about bold, material, lasting solutions, and prepared to innovate to make them a reality.

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Claire Reynolds is a councillor in Tameside and a member of the Progress strategy board