Specialist recruiter, Media Contacts, which places sales people in the publishing, broadcasting and new media industries has responded to Gordon Brown’s pre-election budget.

Media Contacts’ MD Hugh Joslin, says that increasing maternity and paternity leave is a good thing, but doubts whether committed sales people – who are largely money motivated – will want to take their full quota.

“Sales people’s commission will take a big hit if they take their full entitlement,” said Joslin, adding “New fathers normally take some of their annual entitlement to spend time their with families.”

Statutory maternity leave has risen from 18 to 26 weeks and fathers are now entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave. Joslin believes that employers should see maternity pay as a positive staff benefit – it should in fact pay for itself – and urges employers to go beyond the statutory minimum because it makes commercial sense.

“The more time a mother can take time off after birth, the more likely she is to return to her job and this in turn saves money on recruitment and training,” he said

Joslin says that capital gains tax relief will make employee share option schemes more attractive, and may go some way toward compensating for the fall in the value of quoted dot.com companies, particularly those listed on Nasdaq.

“Aesop will now be much easier to administrate and will encourage companies to introduce share option schemes, which will have a knock on effect on staff retention,” said Joslin.