Give all 25-year-olds £10,000, says study

Every person born in the UK should be given £10,000 when they reach the age of 25, according to a new study.

The “universal minimum inheritance” would help combat growing wealth inequality, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

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The charity says that a citizens’ wealth fund worth £186bn could be created by 2029, giving all UK citizens a stake in the economy and helping young people invest in their futures - by buying a property or starting up their own business.

The report, for the IPPR's Commission on Economic Justice, could be financed by tax reforms as well as selling off various assets including the government’s £24bn stake in Royal Bank of Scotland.

The fund could be large enough to pay every 25-year-old a one-off sum of £10,000 from 2030.

The IPPR points out that the wealthiest 10 per cent of all UK households own 44 per cent of the nation’s wealth. However, the bottom half of household own just 9 per cent.

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The report also points out that sovereign wealth funds are not unusual - 70 governments around the world have established similar shemes to the one proposed.

A commonly cited case during the run-up to 2014's Scottish independence referendum was that of Norway, which established a fund in 1990 using its oil revenues. The Scandinavian nation now has more than $1tn (£713bn).

The IPPR report claims that had North Sea oil revenues been invested in a sovereign wealth fund in the 1980s, such a scheme would have been worth more than £500bn today to the people of the UK - or perhaps, given the size of the cash pot, to the people of Scotland alone.