Jeremy Hunt, the millionaire Culture Secretary, has risked angering the middle classes by lambasting the better-off for not giving enough money to charity.
Cough up: We do not donate as much as other nations.Mr Hunt also believes they should do more to help their communities by volunteering.
He said yesterday: 'The people who give the most are often the people who have the least.'
Most controversially, Mr Hunt wants it to become the norm to leave 10% of an estate to good causes when a person dies.
But his comments risk enraging millions who are having to tighten their belts as a result of the recession and face further pressures from the VAT rise on January 4. The minister - in the news earlier this week after two Radio 4 presenters accidentally pronounced his surname with a C - also leaves himself open to the charge that he would like to see charities filling the funding gaps created by Coalition cuts.
In a speech to the European Association of Philanthropy and Giving, he said charity giving in the UK was 'disappointing'.
'As a proportion of their income, the wealthiest people in this country give far less than those who are less well-off,' he said. In the US, those who earn more than £150,000 give eight times more than those in the UK.
'And three-fifths of Britain's biggest donors - those giving more than £100 a month - have incomes of less than £26,000 per year.'
He praised the small scale donors which allowed Birmingham Museum to raise £3.2m to stop the so-called Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo Saxon gold, found last year, being sold off on the open market.
He said: 'The people who give the He said: 'The people who give the most are often the people who have the least. The kind of people whose £5 or £10 donations helped to save the Staffordshire Hoard earlier this year.
'Or young people like Matthew Hughes - the schoolboy who raided his piggy bank to help the nation acquire a Turner watercolour. These people are valued philanthropists, every one. But those who are better off have a particular responsibility.
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'Because a society in which the wealthy are more generous is one where the relationship between haves and have-nots is transformed from resentment to mutual dependence.'
Mr Hunt announced plans for an £80million match-funding scheme, under which donations from the public are matched by the Arts Council lottery fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Other possible changes include using the honours system to persuade people to give huge sums to charity.
Mr Hunt also said Britain needed to look to the US for inspiration.
'It is about a highly ambitious aim for this country to combine the best of US-style philanthropic support with the best of European-style public support,' he said.
'It is not about importing a US model wholesale into the UK. But surely we must ask ourselves what we can learn from a country in which cultural giving per capita is £37 a month compared to just £6 in the UK.'
Last night, Charlotte Linacre, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'It is easy for a millionaire to say that he would give his money to charity without feeling the pinch, but some will wonder where they will find the spare cash to do the same.
'He mentions that poorer people generously give a higher proportion of their income but his Government are poised to steal away this disposable income by putting up VAT.'