Workers’ shares plan labelled a Marxist plot

ownership schemes for up to 11million employees, which critics have described as a “Marxist” plot to “control businesses”.

The shadow chancellor will put forward proposals that would force companies with more than 250 employees to set up so-called “inclusive ownership funds”.

Last night the Confederation of British Industry said that Labour’s proposals were a “diktat” that would send “alarm bells ringing in boardrooms” across the world, adding that they only encouraged “investors to pack their bags” and take their custom elsewhere.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the organisation’s director-general, said: “Business has been resilient in the face of uncertainty, but Labour’s anti-business positioning is starting to bite. It sounds like yet another new tax that adds to the impression that Labour sees business as a bottomless pit of funding.”

Mr Mcdonnell will promise to introduce new legislation to make the schemes mandatory as he calls for workers to be given a greater “say in the management and direction of their company”.

The dividends paid to each shareholder will be capped at £500 per year, while Labour envisages an annual surplus of £2.1 billion, which will be placed in a national fund to be redistributed to public services.

Workers’ fund representatives will have voting rights in companies’ decision-making processes in the same way as other shareholders.

However, there are fears that the plans, which will force companies to hand over at least 1 per cent of shares annually over 10 years, will cause a downturn in the markets this morning, as investors digest the prospect of share dilution.

Critics also pointed out that, unlike many stock ownership plans, employees would not be able to sell their shares due to them being placed in an “asset lock”.

Last night Robert Jenrick, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, called the proposals a “highly interventionist … Marxist approach” which showed that Mr Mcdonnell was attempting to “control businesses” rather than empower workers.

“If this policy were to go ahead it would make the UK a much less attractive place to invest, without giving people a greater stake in the free-market model,” he told The Daily Telegraph.