TAX-DODGING City Link “big, big boss” Jon Moulton was told to quit lecturing yesterday after he launched an audacious attack on Ed Miliband’s new plans to encourage employee ownership.

The Labour leader last week proposed that workers should have a statutory right to buy out any company changing hands.

But the venture capitalist, whose firm Better Capital oversaw the sacking of thousands of City Link workers on Christmas Day and is now set to pocket £20 million from the wind-up, shamelessly blasted the plan as “barking mad.”

“If Labour says ‘all privately owned’ companies, would it include companies like Alliance Boots, any private equity deals?” the Guernsey-based investor purred in the Financial Times.

“It is not thought through and it would set up a major barrier to British industry and give entrepreneurs a serious reason not to invest.”

Mr Moulton (pictured) was skewered by a committee of MPs last month for shifting employees onto “bogus self-employment” — meaning that they were entitled to no redundancy pay when the firm collapsed in December.

He also faced pressure over a deferral of payments to contractors on December 19 which would have effectively transferred funds to Better Capital as City Link’s secure creditor.

He repeatedly defended the firm’s decision to keep workers in the dark about the state of the business — and savaged staff union RMT for warning of the collapse on Christmas Eve.

Mr Miliband’s plans would allow workers to be “notified in advance of a business takeover or disposal,” according to a Labour briefing document.

Veteran Labour MP Michael Meacher blasted: “The City Link collapse is a paradigm of all that is wrong with company law when firms face bankruptcy.

“You’d have thought Jon Moulton would be busy enough dealing with his own failures to attack these encouraging new Labour proposals without a hint of irony.

“Isn’t it odd that all of the people attacking the Labour party at the moment are massive tax-dodgers?”

And RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “The way he treated employees, the last person we need to comment on their rights is Jon Moulton.

“It’s a bit rich of him to weigh in when he’s walking off with £20m.”

conradlandin@peoples-press.com