I used to think Bladerunner was the 1980s film with the most powerful vision of the future. Now I think instead of two rather unlikely French films set deep in rural France - Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Those two films were based on the novels of Marcel Pagnol whose writing touched on deep French fears about depopulation in rural France.

Yves Montand acts the role of Cesar Subeyran, a prosperous farmer. He and his unappealing nephew, Ugelin, want to take over the neighbouring farm which has a spring. They try to buy it but the old farmer refuses. When he dies it is taken over by a newcomer, acted by Gerard Depardieu. He struggles heroically to make the farm a success but Subeyran and Ugelin have blocked up the spring on the farm. His increasingly desperate search for water ultimately results in his death.

The farm is taken over by his daughter, Manon, who discovers what Subeyron and Ugelin have done and seeks revenge for her father’s death. By the end of the film Ugelin has hanged himself and Subeyran has the shock of discovering that Jean, the man he worked so assiduously to destroy, was actually his son. Subeyran had been determined to continue his bloodline through his nephew. But eventually, as a result of his own actions, it is extinguished with the deaths of both his nephew and his son. He dies tortured with this knowledge.

It seems like a world away from Britain today. But the films raise deep questions about fairness across the generations. Even though Subeyran wanted to help his nephew and pass on his wealth to the next generation he conspired in blocking up the spring of future prosperity for the next generation. It is a melodramatic version of the strangely mixed emotions of so many middle-aged parents who are proud of the wealth they have in their house but increasingly anxious whether their own children can ever hope to buy a place of their own.

We used to think in Britain of a society divided by class. Increasingly we worry about a society divided by conflicts of culture and identity. But I believe there is another division, even more significant but much less remarked upon. We are also living in a society increasingly divided by age. Are we really ensuring that the younger generation have the wealth and opportunities we have had? Or are we Soubeyrans who, despite our desire to help our own, are really blocking the fountains of future prosperity for them? It is this question of fairness across the generations that I want to focus on today. It is the moral and political question that lies behind the forthcoming Turner Report, and much more political debate besides.

Our Financial Assets

Let’s begin with the basic financial facts. The total net financial worth of people in Britain is over £5,000bn. It can broadly be broken up into three main categories.

· First there is about £1,200bn of wealth which people directly hold in financial assets – savings accounts, stocks and shares that they personally own.

· Secondly, there is a little bit more, perhaps £1,300bn, in our funded pensions.

· Thirdly, there is the value of our housing net of mortgages on it, which comes out now to over £2,500bn.

There has been an enormous increase in our total personal wealth over the last 20 years. Within that there has been a massive shift in the composition of our wealth as our pensions have stagnated whilst housing has boomed. Before the great housing boom and council house sales of the past 30 years, housing was less than one-fifth of total wealth: it has shot up to nearly half. A generation ago housing wealth used to be worth less than our pension. When Labour came to office our housing was worth about the same as our pensions. Now it is worth double. The house price boom and the pension crisis have massively shifted personal wealth in Britain away from funded savings and towards housing. Let’s look at the three key types of personal wealth a bit more closely.