St Clement's Labour City Councillor Tom Hayes on the government's key to a vast wealth gap

As a regular visitor to doorsteps across Oxford, I’m not surprised by the chorus of voices calling for change.

People are tired of speaking out and voting, but feeling like they have little input. What good is it to pull on the levers and push the buttons when the political system isn’t responding?

This week shows this sense of powerlessness. Bombshell leaks about banks making money from wealthy clients stashing cash in Swiss bank accounts was bad enough.

But then there was the news that our tax authorities have pushed one prosecution in the five years despite having a list of 6,800 HSBC tax-dodging clients.

This gross act of negligence on the part of HMRC is compounded by the realisation that the HSBC chairperson in post left to be a minister eight months after HMRC got the list of clients.

Sadly, this tax dodging is part of a trend rather than a fad. We suffer from surging inequality in income and wealth, which the Government is aiding.

Putting to one side misuse of the tax system, changes in tax nonetheless favour those in higher income brackets. The 2012 top rate income tax cut helped the richest one per cent of earners while tax cuts announced three months ago supported the 10 per cent highest earners by five times as much as the poorest.

Many in my ward are acutely aware that the Government is moving money from the bottom to the top via tax changes.

Few in the past two weeks have been surprised by news that the Government has been turning a blind eye to tax dodging.

The crisis of confidence in unrestrained market capitalism that I see across the city is deepened by the personal stories I’ve heard about the Government coming down hardest on the poorest, cutting their public services and social security support.

For all of its affluence, Oxford has deep vulnerability. Latest estimates show more than one in five households lives in fuel poverty, with parts of my ward having the highest rates.

New figures from the End Child Poverty campaign show one in four of the city’s children living in poverty (some 6,600 children), with 130 children (one in four) living in poverty after housing costs in my ward.

Eleven per cent of the city’s population is indebted, says Money Advice Service data. The Community Emergency Foodbank had an increase in users from 120 per month in 2012 to 200 per month in 2013.

And the city has seven geographical areas (known as super output areas) within the 15 per cent most deprived in the country.

At the root of the tax dodging revelations is the fundamental issue of our plummeting trust in a political process that seems independent of our control.

We need to put our politics on a sound footing, which means putting people with these difficulties back in control of their own destinies and ensuring those at the top of the income ladder pay their tax bills, but also pay a fair share of tax.

Tax dodging isn’t just about a bunch of bad apples.

The revelations stab at the heart of our democracy and its relationship with big money and dysfunctional markets. We need strong action from a leader who is calm under fire. Only then can we level the playing field to build for sustainable growth.