On the 20th of April 2016 we reported regarding The All Party Parliamentary Group for Self-Employment and Freelancing (the ‘APPG’) which is a new group that has been set up to raise awareness within parliament about working independently. This group met for the first time on the 15th September 2015 and one of the main points discussed was the upcoming government review of self-employment.
The David Cameron commissioned review of self-employment has now made ten recommendations, which could positively affect contractors if implemented.
These recommendations are:-
– Guidance on finance, bookkeeping and taxation to be brought into the national curriculum to encourage growth into self-employment
– A central portal with support and services should be available.  Official government website should be better signed posted for resources currently accessible.
– Mortgage, insurance and pension products should be made more freelancer-friendly
– Maternity pay for self-employed should match that of permanent employees and an adoption allowance should be equal to that enjoyed by employees who adopt children
– Government should have a single definition of self-employment for tax and employment law purposes
– Current legislation and administration is over complicated and this should be simplified
– All future government policy should take into account self-employed
– Government should look into taxation amid concerns that this is an administrative burden and barrier to growth and could benefit from simplification and better advice
– More co-working spaces in the community and better information as to their availability
– Organisations to help with technological advances
One of the more extensive recommendations is number seven which asks that government consider self-employed on all future policy decisions.  The reason for this recommendation is that currently the government take into account the impact on a number of different sectors before implementing policies, but self-employment is not one of these.
Various professional firms have argued on behalf of the nation’s self-employed drawing attention to the increase in numbers, which now account for fifteen percentage of the UK’s workforce and their importance to the competitiveness of the economy.
Mr Cameron had said that all ten recommendations will be carefully considered.