Following the announcement of The Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP as the UK’s newly appointed Prime Minister, HR leaders, employers, businesses and those self-employed are all keen to see if she will follow through with her pre-election promises.
She pledged to review the IR35 tax avoidance rules, claiming that they were forcing genuinely self-employed people to pay too much tax.
In an interview with the Sun, she said, “The changes that have been made to IR35 are all about trying to treat the self-employed the same as big business. The fact is, if you’re self-employed, you don’t get the same benefits as being in a big company. You don’t get paid holidays, you didn’t get those benefits. So the tax system should reflect that more.”
Her pledge was met by a fair share of scepticism by contracting market stakeholders. With 94% (476 contractors) believing this to be an empty promise as little has been done in previous reviews to address the problems and impacts caused by IR35 according to a poll done by Qdos.
With Truss now in power, many are calling for meaningful change by making good her pledge and delivering her promise.
- To introduce a new law on minimum staffing levels during strikes for each industry, including for transport, education, healthcare, postal workers, and energy (the threshold will be set individually for each industry)
- To remove the right to paid leave to carry out trade union activities.
- To remove standalone diversity & inclusion roles in NHS.
- To remove the National Insurance hike that was put in place to fund the NHS.
- To reduce holiday leave for Civil Service staff from 27 to 25 days.
Alan Price, CEO at BrightHR commented; “With changes to employment rights and law, this will mean new policies, changes to existing policies and training on new processes. However, how long these changes take to come into force and what help businesses will get in terms of cost-of-living and energy bills, remains to be seen.”
