Stiglitz-led economists push Burnham to back IPCC-style inequality panel

Signers cite UK G20 presidency as opening to project Makerfield test globally

Forty progressive academics, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and economist Kate Pickett, signed an open letter urging Prime Minister Andy Burnham to back a new United Nations effort to track and address global inequality. The letter asks Burnham to use his planned appearance at next month’s UN General Assembly to signal British support for an International Panel on Inequality (IPI), a body being developed under UN auspices and modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The appeal arrives as Burnham’s government prepares to assume the rotating presidency of the G20 in 2027 and as charities, thinktanks and backbench MPs urge the new prime minister to use the UK’s G20 presidency to reclaim Labour’s leadership on global development. The new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has signalled that he wants to make international development more central to the government’s priorities, including by taking up the UK’s seat on the World Bank’s board himself. Some Labour MPs have called for a long-term roadmap back to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.

The letter’s signatories include University College London professor Mariana Mazzucato, Larry Kramer, vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics, and Pickett, a professor at York University and co-author of the inequality study The Spirit Level. The group of academics is led by Pickett. They frame their request around what they call the “Makerfield test” — the organising principle of Burnham’s policy program — saying it “aims to ensure that places forgotten by Westminster finally receive fairness after decades of neglect.”

The proposed IPI would be chaired by Stiglitz and would provide, in the letter’s words, “an independent, trusted global evidence base on the causes and consequences of inequality, alongside analysis of the policies that can reduce it.” Brazil, South Africa, Norway and Spain have been involved in setting it up. Echoing the IPCC, the panel would track extreme wealth disparities and recommend global policy responses.

“With the UK set to chair the G20 in 2027, Burnham now has a chance to demonstrate his leadership on the world stage,” the letter says. The signatories urge him to “cement the organising principles of his politics globally.”

Responding to the letter, Stewart Wood, the Foreign Office minister for growth, said the government’s approach to the economy was inseparable from its international engagement. “Changing the way our economy works so that it is fairer and more productive is not just about what we do at home,” Wood said in a statement. “It also requires that we work in partnership with other countries and international institutions to strengthen the global economy.” Wood added that the government would “work with allies to build the coalition we need for economic change – to boost global growth, combat inequality, make our international financial institutions more effective, and back more coordinated development support and climate action.”

The letter arrives against the backdrop of cuts to UK aid spending under Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer. Labour slashed aid spending to boost the defence budget, prompting the resignation of then development minister Anneliese Dodds. The 0.7% target, originally set by Gordon Brown’s Labour government, was temporarily dropped by Conservative chancellor Rishi Sunak during the Covid pandemic; Starmer’s government made further cuts rather than return to the target. Recent analysis of those cuts, cited in coverage of the letter, suggested bilateral aid to some African countries had been cut by 90%.

The signatories point to Burnham’s record championing inequality reduction as mayor of Greater Manchester, a post he held for nine years before becoming prime minister in July. Stiglitz previously chaired a commission for the Vatican on debt levels in developing countries, in which he recommended a range of policies including outright debt relief for the hardest-hit countries and new legislation — including in the UK — to curtail the rights of “vulture funds.”