Fairer shares
THE Budget for savings and ownership — it's four months ahead, but the headlines write themselves already' — must be the best chance yet for Esops. These fabulous entities are or would be Employees' Share Ownership Plans, familiar in America, barely established in this country, where they must overcome a Grand National course of obstacles set up, without malice, by the Inland Revenue. From the Govern- ment's back benches Ian Taylor now calls for Fair Shares For All The Workers (published by the Adam Smith Institute), asking, not for tax breaks or subsidies for Esops, but for the removal of the obstacle course, which he charts. 'Legislative change', he says, 'should focus on the removal of the existing barriers.' So the workers' cause finds itself championed by a Conservative MP, backed by the Adam Smith free-thinkers and also by the Insti- tute of Directors. To them, it is the cause of the owner.
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