That's rich

Comedian and political commentator and columnist Mark Steel writes in the Independent that last year the richest 54 people in Britain had an estimated income of £126billion and the amount of this paid in tax was 0.14 per cent.

Philip Green, whose group owns Burtons, Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. In 2005 it declared a dividend of £1.299billion. But £1.2bn of this he kindly gave to his wife who was resident in Monaco and therefore didn't have to pay the UK rate of tax. It's estimated this saves the Greens £300million, but that would still have left a billion . Obviously , not enough .

The Government admits that tax avoidance last year was somewhere between £97billion and £150billion , whereas benefit fraud amounted to less than one billion pounds.

So who are the real robbers and cheats ??