Kevin McKenna

I thank the hon. Member for securing this really important debate. I recently visited Bodylines, a salon and spa in the middle of Sittingbourne, which is run by Liza—with a z, not an s, just to confuse everyone—who made this point very strongly. Bodylines is a great salon that has been there for about 40 years—it is a well-embedded business in the town—and she used to offer lots of training places, but now she simply cannot because she is out-competed by venues that rent chairs by the hour to the pseudo self-employed. Liza told me how that is a real threat to the future of the industry. My mother trained as a hairdresser in the ’60s before becoming a social worker. As the hon. Member said, these roles are vital for getting people into a whole range of employment opportunities, but without businesses that can support them, they will be gone forever. The pseudo self-employed roles will not persist, either. The biggest thing Liza raised with me was how much money from VAT the Government are losing. Those other venues are not charging VAT and the responsible self-employed are not paying it, so we are losing money in that way as well. This is something that, on every front, we have to change.