Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for putting it forward. It is a shame that we have to cram six months of misery into an hour and a half, but we will do our best.

Many of those excluded from Government support over the past six months work in the creative industries—in TV, theatre and the arts, but also in events and exhibitions. Sometimes I feel I have got all 3 million of the excluded in my constituency, which is very arts and ents heavy. With 70 years of the BBC, we have grown a massive media industry, including commercial broadcasters. We have three highly regarded theatres in the Lyric, the Bush and the Riverside. We have major national music venues, such as the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and the Olympia exhibition centre. Such venues have had a double-whammy, because in many cases they and their industries do not get any help and are not being allowed to open—it is likely, the way things are going, that that will be further delayed—and many of them rely on exactly the excluded groups we are talking about today.

Of course this is not just about those groups. I have been involved recently with everything from the wedding industry to the Bar. Anything that brings barristers and wedding planners together must be quite extraordinary. We go to them at different times of our lives when we may be happy or sad, but there is an interesting point there, which is what all these organisations have in common. Often they are entrepreneurial. Often they are risk-taking. Often people who are at the beginning of their career are investing and have limited incomes. Often, also, they are following professional advice from accountants and the Treasury that has got them into the situation they are in. They are not wilfully ending up in this situation; they are there because they have entered into it in good faith.

I have to declare that I was a self-employed barrister for a number of years, and the figures from the Bar Council say that not only have three quarters of chambers lost 50% of their work, but the majority say they will not be able to last more than six to 12 months. Some people may not cry many tears over that, but the fact is that these people—I hope that many of them are successful and go on to great careers—cannot make do on the income that they have, and they are being done down in that way.

I have so many letters from constituents, and often they are from couples who both work in those industries. I think that most of us know the common problems. They could be people who are just above the £50,000 earnings threshold. They could be people who recently became self-employed having set up their businesses. They could be people who have moved between jobs. They could be people whose incomes come from a range of different sources. Whatever it is, they fall through the gaps in the Government’s scheme, and they cannot get any help at all in many cases.

The Chancellor, of all people, pooh-poohs them and says, “These are wealthy people,” and talks about dividends, but I have a letter from a constituent who gets £10,000 basic and then relies on dividends to top up their income. I could go on for a very long time—I am sure all Members could—in relation to these matters, but I will end on this: whereas we have got our act together with the Excluded UK all-party parliamentary group and through ExcludedUK, the Government are all over the place. We often have to deal with four different Departments to get an answer. We are taking two or three months to get Departments to answer. Please will the Treasury Minister sort that out, make the change retrospective and help people who are genuinely in need?