The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called for a rethink of the way the economy works in the UK, describing the current system as “unjust”.
In an interview with the BBC marking the launch of a major report by thinktank, the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice (which Welby is a member of), the Archbishop backed calls for more public spending, higher taxes on the wealthy and the need for a “living wage”.
“People suffer from injustice in the economy…” he said. “We need a living wage because that enables people to live with dignity, and the dignity of the human being is fundamental to our understanding of what a just economy is about.”
He also supported calls for a new regulator to oversee tech firms and ensure companies such as Google and Facebook were using people’s personal data in a socially responsible manner.
The archbishop said that the way they used data, as well as having implications for people’s security, also had “huge implications for the flourishing of individuals and the prosperity and fairness of our society”.
“Data is the real place where the money is, and we’ve always said that people with huge power should be regulated,” he said.
