Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps he has taken to strengthen protections for the self-employed.

An individual’s entitlement to employment rights at work is determined by their employment status, employee, worker or self-employed.

Self-employed individuals should expect to have the most flexibility and control over how and when they work. It is a category for those who run and manage their own business. Generally, self-employed individuals have no statutory employment rights but are entitled to some health and safety protections/obligations as well as anti-discrimination rights when they are contracted by a customer or client.

The UK labour market is performing strongly with high employment and low unemployment and the Government’s three-tiered employment status framework strikes the right balance between the flexibility our economy needs and worker protections.