Clegg in drive for "John Lewis economy" Nick Clegg will on Wednesday float proposals, unpopular with many businesses, for staff to have a right to request shares in the company they work for, as part of his drive to turn Britain into more of a "John Lewis economy." A report for the deputy prime minister proposes that if at least 10 per cent of employees want to do so, they should have a statutory right to lodge a proposal for all staff to share in the ownership. Initially this would apply to companies with more than 250 workers only. Employers would have a duty to "consider the request reasonably" and would have to give reasons for refusal, says the report by Graeme Nuttall of Field Fisher Waterhouse, a law firm. Mr Clegg will tell a summit on employee ownership that the banking scandal is "a timely reminder that our economy desperately needs an injection of responsibility, greater checks on unaccountable power, power in more hands." In a speech in January in Mansion House, the home and office of the Lord Mayor of London, he promised to inject wider employee ownership into the "bloodstream" of the economy, but business groups warned against imposing a new burden on entrepreneurs. Although Mr Nuttall's report proposes a statutory right, a government "call for evidence" to be launched this week will leave open whether it should be statutory or achieved through some other mechanism. The government will also seek views on the minimum number of staff who could make a request, the grounds for turning one down and whether it should be allowed at any time or at a specific point in the business cycle, such as a change of ownership. Mr Nuttall proposes a "light-touch" approach whereby employers could turn the request down if the timing were wrong or simply because owners were not prepared to make shares available. New figures from Co-operatives UK, a trade body, show that turnover of the employee-owned sector grew by 1.1 per cent last year compared with 0.7 per cent output growth for the economy as a whole. The UK has more than 120 companies with significant employee ownership, including John Lewis Partnership. Supporters say they have lower absenteeism and higher productivity and are more resilient in downturns, but their combined turnover of £26bn a year is barely 2 per cent of gross domestic product.