IT IS remarkable that Bank of England governor Mark Carney in his Inclusive Capitalism speech of May 27 remarked that all the research shows that “relative equality is good for growth.”   

It is not an original idea since IMF chief Christine Lagarde and the current Pope have both made similar comments.   

So if even the right — from both the Bank of England and International Monetary Fund — acknowledge that gross inequality has gone far too far, and that the market system determining the allocation of pay is now wholly out of control, why doesn’t the Labour Party run with it and make it one of the key half-dozen themes at the National Policy Forum next Friday?   

For the evidence of the toxic and damaging effects of the ultra-inequality we have today is overwhelming.

Contrary to new Labour’s attitude of “being intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich” on the grounds that it didn’t harm anyone else, all the evidence now indicates it does do exactly that.   

There are now over 200 studies on income inequality and health.   

Life expectancy, infant death rates, low birth weight, obesity and poor mental health have been repeatedly been shown to be worse in more unequal societies.   

Britain, for example, has the fourth-lowest life expectancy out of the 23 most developed countries.   

The three countries with even lower life expectancy — Portugal, the US and Singapore — have even greater income inequality.

Infant mortality and low birth rate show the same pattern.   

Infant deaths per 1,000 are three in Japan and Sweden, but seven in the US.   

It is incredible but true that, at least until the European Union crisis erupted, babies born in the US had a 40 per cent higher risk of dying in the first year of life than babies born in Greece, despite Greece spending less than half the amount per head on healthcare.   

Take another example.  Obesity affects 30 per cent of the US population but in Japan, which is one of the most equal countries, only 3 per cent.   

In Britain a fifth of the population are overweight — twice the level in the Netherlands.   

Or an even more poignant example — mental ill health.   

In the US one in four of the population are afflicted in this way, but in Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain it’s less than one in 10. In the UK it’s one in five.

What all these studies show is that it’s not just a matter of spending more money on the NHS — though the Tories’ £20 billion health cuts make that absolutely necessary now.   

It’s also crucially important to attack ill health at its root, and that means drastically reducing inequality to provide the foundation for better health across society, as well as tackling a whole range of other social pathologies by the same means.

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. Read his blog at www.michaelmeacher.info.