The Super-Rich and UsEpisode 1

Britain has more billionaires per head than any other country on earth, yet we're also the most unequal nation in Europe. We were told the super-rich would make us richer too, so why hasn't that happened, and what does the arrival of their astronomical wealth really mean for the rest of us? In programme one of this two-part series, Jacques Peretti looks at how the super-rich first exploited an obscure legal loophole to make Britain one of the most attractive tax havens on earth. He argues this was no accident. Wooing the super-rich was a deliberate strategy by government to reconfigure the British economy, under the belief their wealth would trickle down to the rest of us. But it didn't. The OECD now say the British economy would have been 20 per cent bigger had we not pursued the super-rich. So who sold us the fallacy and why?

The Super-Rich and Us was broadcast on BBC2 at Thursday 22 January 2015, 23:45. This episode was initially placed on Thursday 8 January 2015.