Coronavirus: Why the self-employed need paid like everyone else – Angus Robertson

Tens of thousands of people in Edinburgh are self-employed, more than 300,000 people in ­Scotland are self-employed and more than five million people are self employed in the UK, which constitutes 15 per cent of the workforce.

Self-employed people like plumbers are being hit hard in the pocket (Picture: PA)

If you’ve always been in salaried employment working for a company, the public or third sector, you’ve ­probably not given it much thought about how many of the services you rely on and how many friends and ­family are themselves self-employed. But you should.

In the current coronavirus crisis major efforts are being made to protect jobs and livelihoods, but initial plans support only employees. Under the UK Government plans full and part-time employees are to have up to 80 per cent of their wages paid, to a maximum of £2,500 per month. People earning £25,000 a year can now benefit from £20,000 assistance via the new job retention scheme, while at the same time someone who’s self-employed will only access around £5,000 worth of support. How can that be right? How is that fair? How is that sensible? Why should the self-employed be thrown under a bus?

Think about these services for a second, starting with tradespeople: painters, plumbers, electricians, plasterers, tilers, carpenters and many others. Then there are personal ­services – home-cleaning, child-minding, dog walkers, hairdressing, personal training and tutoring. How about freelance writers, web-developers, graphic designers and photographers? Not forgetting many accountants, bookkeepers, business consultants and contractors in information technology, in the oil and gas sector, in renewable energy, in construction, in media and design. Then there are the performing arts, with musicians, actors, and a full range of ancillary roles. What about taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and many others in the gig economy and all the other self-employed, sole-traders, ­freelancers and contractors besides?

With large parts of the economy just not working, many of these people are not making any money. It’s bad enough at the best of times for self-employed people getting by without paid holiday, sick pay or maternity/paternity leave. There’s not a workplace pension at hand, its a challenge securing a mortgage and then there’s insurance to think about too – ­personal accident, income protection and ­professional indemnity.

There is of course a solution, which is to follow our Norwegian neighbours and pay 80 per cent of average earnings over the past three years, which could be capped at £2,500 a month, as with employees. While clearly it is more complicated for the tax authorities at HMRC to find a neat and uncomplicated solution for the self-employed, it is being done elsewhere. As with much else in response to the coronavirus epidemic, the UK is few weeks behind other countries.

The other major injustice still to be addressed is the lamentable level of sick pay in the UK. If you face two weeks of illness and recovery from the likes of coronavirus, you would receive £574.70 on Austria and Germany, £459.76 in Sweden, £402.29 in the Netherlands and £241.37 in Spain. In the UK it is a paltry £188.50 over two weeks.

Recent weeks have shown that what was previously thought to be impossible is now actually possible and totally necessary. In this huge effort to combat coronavirus the UK government can’t throw the self-employed and the sick to the wolves. The solutions are out there. Let’s act now.