Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps are being taken to support freelance workers in the creative sector.

The self-employed workforce is crucial to the success of the UK's world-leading creative industries, which employ nearly twice the number of self-employed workers as a proportion of the workforce compared to the rest of the economy.

We understand that many self-employed workers in the creative industries desire greater job security. That is why we committed in the Creative Industries Sector Plan to appoint a Freelance Champion, who will advocate for the creative sector’s freelancers within government and be a member of the Creative Industries Council.

More broadly, with the Employment Rights Act we have committed to helping the self-employed thrive in good quality work through additional measures to strengthen protections - including the extension of health and safety and blacklisting protections, and right to a written contract. The Government has also announced measures to address the misuse of non-disclosure agreements by employers to silence workplace harassment and abuse, and a power to extend the protections to wider groups than employees and workers.