Fairer shares
WE have it on David Howell's authority that the Prime Minister believes in the redistribution of capital with a fervour which makes Anthony Wedgwood Benn look a moderate. (So he does now, any- how, poor chap.) Next week she has the chance to put the taxpayers' money where her mouth is, when one of her backben- chers, Mr Nigel Forman, moves a new clause in the Finance Bill to make it easier. He has three proposals, and since two of them are tax concessions which would cost anything up to £900 million over three years, I think his third horse is the one to back. This would stop a company's top brass giving themselves wonderful share options (under the 1984 Finance Act), unless they also give the whole staff a share ownership scheme (under the 1978 Act). You need only glance at a clutch of accounts to see the rewards that directors have been prepared to vote to each other in the sacred name of incentives. Mr Forman rightly says that incentives do not lose their power outside the boardroom.
Previous page
