The government has failed to address inequalities in both health and wealth, a new report has found.

Published in the British Medical Journal, the study found that the contrast in life expectancy between rich and poor has continued to widen under Labour - reaching the largest difference since Victorian times.

"It is certainly the biggest in the 20th century since data was available," said professor of clinical epidemiology George Davey Smith. 

"Life expectancy [in Victorian times] was overall much shorter - there was less scope for differences. 

"This is against the background where overall life expectancy is improving, but the differences between social groups is getting wider."

Health inequalities widened in the 1980s and 1990s, a trend that has continued into the 21st century despite the announcement in February 2001 of national targets to reduce the gap in infant mortality across social groups and to raise life expectancy in the most disadvantaged areas faster than anywhere by 2010.

The analysis found that among men, the difference between Glasgow City, which has the lowest life expectancy, and East Dorset, which has the highest, rose to 11 years, compared to 10 years in 1997.  During the same time period, the difference between women in the two areas increased from 7.8 to 8.4 years.

"The two together is just under a year - that is quite a big increase over a relatively short period of time," added Professor Smith.

Income inequalities increased considerably in the 1980s and were sustained in the 1990s and 2000s, but have recently started to fall.  Wealth, authors found, is more unevenly distributed than income.

The report called for more "substantial redistributive policies" to address the problem, adding: "It is not adequate simply to compare the worst off with the average, nor to pull some of the worst off out of poverty and assume inequalities in health will reduce."

Although Labour has raised the living standards among some of the poorest people in Britain, the study warned that "inequalities in wealth have continued to grow and are likely to be transmitted to the next generation".