Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)

My Lords, this has been a very important debate about employment status. I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea for his important and thoughtful contribution to the debate. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Freyberg, Lord Londesborough and Lord Clement-Jones, for their extremely important contributions. As my noble friend Lord Moynihan rightly pointed out, the Government in their make work pay document have committed to consulting on a simpler employment framework—one that distinguishes clearly between workers and the genuinely self-employed. However, the reality is that platform workers and the innovative businesses that rely on them remain in the dark. There is no detail, no timeline and no clarity as to when or indeed whether these major reforms to employment status will materialise. In the meantime, uncertainty reigns, and that uncertainty is not without cost. It risks holding back investment, stifling expansion and deterring new entrants into the UK market. We now hear so often from the Government about making the UK the best place in the world to do business, but a failure to provide clarity on the future of employment status, particularly in the growing platform economy, sends the opposite signal. The Government would therefore do well to heed my noble friend’s intervention. If they are serious about supporting flexibility, entrepreneurship and modern ways of working, then they have got to provide both the sector and the self-employed with confidence and clarity on what exactly lies ahead.