0 socii, plaudite
MY idea of a socially owned company would be one where I and my colleagues (Latin, socii) working for it owned it. In all but name, Labour's document agrees: `Genuine share incentive schemes can in- crease the influence of the employees who take part in them, as well as contributing to the economic performance of the com- panies.' We have come a long way in the 12 years since an incoming Labour govern- ment slapped down employees' own-as- you-earn schemes by taxing the most mod- est gains as income. Now we are told that its successor will model its plans on those of that unlikely exemplar, the United States. There, trusts which borrow money to buy shares on employees' behalf are fostered by tax relief. With co-operatively owned companies, too, we have moved on — from the 1970s co-ops established as a form of political patronage, and from the disastrous co-ops set up by workers who, trying to preserve their jobs, lost their savings too. The new proposals seem to owe much to work done at Job Ownership under Lord Grimond and Robert Oakeshott. They include plans for phasing out capital gains tax and capital transfer tax on conversions of companies into co-ops. `Equity participation co-ops' would be allowed to take in outside partners. All these concessions, though, must go all the way through the workforce. A Conserva- tive backbencher, Michael Forsyth, put down an amendment to this year's Finance Bill, requiring companies which give stock options for top managers also to make shares available to all staff. The amend- ment was never called. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would do well to put it in next year's Bill. He can afford to steal these clothes while the Whigs are still in the water.
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