Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

If they do not have any money, they cannot save their business, can they? That seems an odd intervention to make.

The Petitions Committee urged the Government to amend the scheme to take into account periods of maternity and paternal leave to ensure fairness and equality, yet, once again, Ministers have deliberately looked the other way. That phrase “whatever it takes” apparently does not stretch to ending discrimination against self-employed women. Nor do they care very much about freelancers, especially those on short-term PAYE contracts, as is now common practice because of HMRC requirements. They are caught between a rock and a hard place: denied access to the job retention scheme and the chance to be furloughed, yet often not earning enough from self-employment to qualify for the self-employed scheme.

In some sectors of our economy, freelance working is especially common. In my own Brighton constituency, for example, a number of people work in the arts. Three in four jobs in the arts across the country are freelance. They are the people who make the plays, the musicals and live experiences that are a part of the fabric of British life. We do not always see what they do, but they are invaluable, yet one in three of the skills base in theatre, for example, have missed out on any Government support since March, with disabled people, people of colour and early career workers disproportionately affected. Young people are also over-represented compared with other sectors of the economy. Therefore, rather than recovery, we see a sector that is facing total collapse.

Failure adequately to support the cultural, creative and events industries has put at risk 16,000 jobs across Brighton and Hove and £1.5 billion in turnover. My inbox, like, I am sure, the inboxes of many other hon. Members, is full of emails from constituents forced to abandon long-standing careers in the arts because there is no income support for them as freelancers.

Many working in media and journalism are similarly struggling, as the National Union of Journalists has evidenced, with its members routinely treated as employees for tax purposes, yet not eligible for furlough and not afforded the same protections and rights as staff when it comes to employment law.

Another group of people hard hit is those who choose to combine self-employment with PAYE income. I have a number of constituents in that situation, often as a result of being midway through making the transition to running their own company and being wholly self-employed.

None of this is inevitable. All of it is the result of a conscious choice by the Government to abandon anywhere between 3 million and 6 million self-employed people and freelancers. As the current self-employed scheme winds down, now is the time to change tack and do the right thing by these people. The details of a more inclusive scheme have been set out by the campaign groups and by the Treasury Committee. The ForgottenLtd group published a rescue package. Backed by the Federation of Small Businesses and other business groups, it sent it to the Treasury over a month ago, and it is still waiting for a response.

I appreciate how much other people need and want to speak, so let me quickly, in my last few minutes, outline three things that can be done. First, we can retrospectively expand the self-employed scheme. Bring those people who have been excluded from it into its ambit and make it fair by retrospectively starting it from 1 March to give it parity with the furlough scheme.

Secondly, as well as looking back, we need to look forward, so the Government should immediately extend the duration to the many sectors where the self-employed are a significant part of the workforce and which will not be back to anything like normal for some time to come. Thirdly, the Government should be looking at ways of keeping pace with the changing shape of the economy, balancing public health and economic priorities with the likelihood of more local lockdowns, for example. Part of the answer to that is a basic income scheme. The self-employed and job retention schemes do not work in tandem with the welfare system and therefore do not approach anything like a proper safety net. Many people have not been able to claim universal credit. Some have received no support whatever and the consequences are devastating, so much so that ExcludedUK has been working with the Samaritans on creating a dedicated helpline called Mind the Gap for those experiencing mental health problems. There is a simple and effective way to start to put things right and a universal basic income delivered via a welfare system that lifts everybody up would be a key cornerstone of that.



In conclusion, on Tuesday the Chancellor said he had

“not hesitated to act in creative and effective ways to support jobs and employment,”—[Official Report, 15 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 160]—

and promised he would continue to do so. The self-employed and freelancers rightly want that creativity to apply to them as well. The Treasury has demonstrated time and again that it does not understand self-employment, so at the very least those of us standing up for the excluded are asking this again today: please will the Minister go back to the Treasury team and ask them to meet us so that at the very least they can understand what is at stake here? The stakes could not be higher: people’s businesses are being destroyed and their lives are being destroyed. That is not right and that is why so many Members want to speak in this debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There is a four-minute limit.