Lord Sugar says no one in Britain is really that poor, apart from 'some people up north and in places like that'

Fresh from saying he'd move to China if the anti-austerity, socialist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister, billionaire Lord Sugar has said that no one in Britain is really poor.

The declaration came in an interview with the Times (£), in which the Apprentice star also reveals that he could cash a cheque for £100m right now if he wanted to, doesn't know the cost of a box of eggs and the only things he worries about the price of are "planes and boats and things like that".

When questioned about the huge gap between the rich and poor in Britain, the self-made Londoner had this to say:

Who are the poor these days? You’ve got some people up north and in places like that who are quite poor, but they all have mobile phones, being poor, and they’ve got microwave ovens, being poor, and they’ve got televisions, being poor.

Compare that to 60 years ago. If you really want to know what poor is like go and live where I lived in Hackney, where you didn’t have enough money for the electric, didn’t have a shilling for the meter.

In response to the Lord Sugar's remark, John Hilary, executive director at War on Want, told the Guardian that the peer is clearly out of touch.

Parents sleeping on kitchen floors because they don’t have enough beds. Disabled people driven to suicide as a result of losing their benefits. Immigrant families, like his own once was, working all hours of day and night just to make ends meet.

The reality of poverty today is a million miles from his rosy picture of it. But as someone who’s been a multi-millionaire for the last 40 years, why would he know?

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