Clause 61 - Employee share ownership plans
Finance Bill
11:15 am
Mr Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I, too, welcome you to our deliberations, Mr. O'Hara.
We welcome clause 61 and schedule 13, which address some of the issues that we raised in Committee on last year's Finance Bill about employee share ownership schemes, in particular the territory of people belonging to a scheme as part of a group and changing employment from one subsidiary to another. However, the issue that we raised last year in respect of non-UK employees was not picked up in schedule 13. The Government's amendment to our amendment No. 14 leads me to believe that they accept our point.
As the schedule stands, an employee share ownership plan cannot extend partnership share awards to non-UK employees who do not have a salary as defined for the purposes of the schedule. That issue has cropped up in practice and has led employers to adopt additional plans, with additional costs, if they have significant numbers of non-UK employees. The objective of our amendment is that non-UK employees will be able to contribute out of salary to the same plans to which UK employees contribute, and we suggest that that change should be backdated to last year, as we believe that a drafting error led to the omission.