Corbyn ‘would drive out wealth creators’
Raid on assets would stop us building firms say top entrepreneurs
SOME of Britain’s most successful businessmen have blasted Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge to seize company assets and said his radical tax and spending plans posed a ‘ huge threat’ to wealth and job creation.
Self- made tycoons – including investment guru Peter Hargreaves, Carpetright founder Lord Harris and plumbing boss Charlie Mullins – said Labour’s manifesto could lead to an exodus of entrepreneurs if the party seizes victory in next month’s General Election.
‘ I think an awful lot of people would leave the country,’ said Peter Hargreaves, the billionaire founder of investment supermarket Hargreaves Lansdown. ‘When people work very hard, have very successful businesses and are very entrepreneurial – government interference in their businesses and punitive taxes are just the things to cause them to leave.’
Lord Harris of Peckham, who left Carpetright in 2014 and later set up a rival chain, described Labour’s plan as ‘probably the worst manifesto I’ve ever seen’.
‘If this all goes through and they do everything in the manifesto, we’ll be back to the 1970s,’ said the 77- year- old, who also set up the Harris Federation to revive the fortunes of failing London schools as state-backed academies.
Charlie Mullins, founder and chief executive of London’s Pimlico Plumbers, said: ‘Labour is a huge threat to entrepreneurs and enterprising British business.
‘Corbyn doesn’t understand business and these policies are just a vote-grabbing exercise rather than anything based in reality.’
Labour’s manifesto included a pledge to seize 10 per cent of the shares of large companies and hand them over to workers.
Corbyn’s party would also seek to nationalise companies across several industries including rail, mail, water and power networks plus a chunk of telecoms giant BT.
Hargreaves, who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown from his Bristol home and helped build it up into an £8 billion firm with 1,300 employees, said: ‘To have 10 per cent taken off entrepreneurs arbitrarily is a real disincentive [to building a business in Britain].’
He added that handing all workers a stake in their company would discourage hard work i n these firms. ‘Just giving a stake in the company to workers, despite their efforts and contribution, is extremely bad because it doesn’t differentiate between the ones that really are contributing to the business and the ones that really are just turning up – the 9 to 5 brigade, I call them.’
Hargreaves, 73, added: ‘I don’t want to leave this country. I enjoy the seasons here, I enjoy my garden, my vegetable patch, and I can’t think that I would want to leave.
‘But if things become very uncomfortable – if the rich people in this country are targeted and we are turned into pariahs by a very Leftwing government – then you might change your mind.’
Lord Harris – who set up Tapi Carpets in 2015 with his son Martin and now employs more than 500 staff across 127 stores – said: ‘A lot of the staff at my company have bought our shares. Would they be giving 10 per cent of their own shares away? That is ridiculous.’
He added: ‘Other business people I’ve spoken with are considering their positions. We’re all worried. If I was 40 years old I would think about living abroad now. This is not a normal Labour Party. This is so radical. It’s taking money from the rich and this is only the start.’
Mullins said: ‘Increasing corporation tax and transferring shares to the workforce will slice the amount entrepreneurs can reinvest in their businesses and in the creation of new jobs.’
A Labour Party spokesperson said last night: ‘Labour welcomes the news that the vested interests who make a fortune from Tory tax breaks and ripping off the public don’t like our plans. Labour’s investment plans will grow our economy, providing investors and pension funds a wealth of opportunities and building a modern economy fit for the future alongside a fair taxation system in which we all pay our fair shares.’
Meanwhile, energy bosses warned last night that Labour’s plans to raise £11 billion through a raid on
the oil and gas industry would drive investors out of the North Sea. Labour outlined proposals for a one-off ‘windfall tax’ on oil and gas firms to help the UK ‘transition’ to a green economy. Deirdre Michie, chief executive of Oil and Gas UK which represents energy firms, said such a move would ‘drive investors away and damage the competitiveness of the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry’.
Major North Sea investors in recent years include energy firms Chrysaor and Neptune, founded by former Centrica boss Sam Laidlaw. In September, Chrysaor completed its $2.675 billion (£2 billion) acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ oil and gas assets in the central North Sea.
Graham Swindells, head of North Sea oil and gas firm Cluff Natural Resources, said: ‘Excessively taxing oil and gas companies would be immensely damaging for the industry and the economy.’
Labour did not explain how the proposal would work, but criticised the energy sector for not paying enough tax during the North Sea boom.
Michie added that oil and gas will remain an important part of the UK’s energy mix for ‘decades to come’, and warned that increasing Britain’s reliance on imports would affect the security of the UK’s energy supply.
‘Imports do not sustain UK jobs or the supply chain companies whose expertise we need to enable the energy transition,’ she said.
The UK oil industry supports more than 270,000 UK jobs and delivers £24 billion of value to the UK economy.