Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

For the sake of transparency, I refer hon. Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. At the point when I was elected to this House, I was still self-employed and, with a bit of cross-over to complete a couple of projects, I remained so before I completely ceased trading much earlier this year.

As someone who was self-employed for 15 years, I come to this debate understanding what self-employed people go through and the risks they take, often putting their own homes on the line in order to build a business. Most importantly, I speak in this debate because there are some 12,000 people registered as self-employed in my constituency of Buckingham.

The self-employed and those who take the risk to start their own business will always have my absolute respect and admiration. They are the wealth creators, not just for themselves but for the supply chains and services they use to go about their trade or profession. They are the vital disrupters who propel competition and innovate. Those who take this worthy entrepreneurial path do so, as I have mentioned, at serious personal risk: their own homes are on the line. It is because of that very risk that when crisis or disaster strikes, such as we have seen with coronavirus, they are left the most vulnerable if their trade cannot continue through no fault of their own.

I want to put on record my absolute thanks and gratitude to the Government for making available a support package that has supported 4,300 self-employed people in my constituency, receiving grants worth a total of £14.5 million. It must be acknowledged that this Government’s covid support scheme for the self-employed has been among the most generous in the world. However, like so many other hon. and right hon. Members, I have heard far too many stories of those who have fallen through the gaps.

Each and every freelancer, contractor, self-employed businessman or woman who has come to my surgeries or written to me has a different story to tell, and that is important because it speaks to the diversity and vibrancy of entrepreneurialism and how it works and thrives. Not everybody fits into the sort of box that I fear HMRC officials would deeply love them to neatly sit in. Our challenge is how we make up for those losses if we are to come together as a country and bounce back.

I have argued in the past and written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my other hon. and right hon. Friends in the Treasury calling for a support package. However, if such a retrospective package cannot be delivered, I urge my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary and the whole Treasury team, as they look to the upcoming Budget, to look at ways in which we can stimulate the self-employed sector and ensure that we are recognising them in the tax system, including the risks they take and the costs they incur. For example, the value of every invoice is not necessarily profit—there is cost in there that needs to be taken into account—and dividends are a legal and legitimate way in which people have paid themselves, on the advice of their accountants, for many decades.

Let us find a way to support all our self-employed, freelancers and owner directors of limited companies, and give them the stimulus to grow our economy.