MILLIONAIRES have jumped in number by 41 per cent over the last five years due to rocketing house prices and stock markets, Barclays revealed yesterday.

According to the Barclays UK Prosperity Map, the 508,000 millionaires in 2010 have become 715,000 this year.
But the figures show that only one in 65 adults is that fortunate.

“These figures expose the claim that ‘we’re all in it together’ or that somehow there is less money around,” said Left Economics Advisory Panel economist Andrew Fisher.

Office for National Statistics data shows that the richest 10 per cent of households own 44 per cent of household wealth — in a country where the most disadvantaged have to rely on charity in the face of government spending cuts and benefit sanctions.

More than a million people, including 400,000 children, received three-days’-worth of emergency food in the past year.

This was up 19 per cent on 2013-14, foodbank charity the Trussell Trust said.

“Successive governments have institutionalised grotesque inequality, and there is clearly a need for the rich to pay higher taxes on incomes and wealth and for serious action to be taken on tax avoidance and evasion,” said Mr Fisher.

Meanwhile, nearly half of the last five years’ nouveau riche live outside London and south-east England.

House values have increased and many people who lived in and around the M25 have chosen to move to cheaper regions to get more for their cash.

The number of millionaires in London escalated by 48 per cent to 191,000 — more than the number of wealthy people in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England combined.

Reading, Cambridge and Birmingham were the most affluent cities outside of London, while the east of England saw the third largest increase in millionaires, with 23,000 joining the elite.

The Barclays research claimed that every UK region is now more affluent than it was five years ago, with measures including household wealth, gross domestic product (GDP), exam results, charitable donations and entrepreneurship taken into account.

The rapid growth in millionaires is expected to return to more normal levels over the long term, with a 9 per cent increase in Britain by 2025, in line with GDP growth.