Self-employed workers don’t need rescuing

‘Workers,’ says Matthew Taylor, whose report into modern practices is published this week, ‘should be treated as human beings, not cogs in a machine’. How very grand – and how fatuous. His entire report, commissioned by Theresa May in one of her first acts after becoming Prime Minister last July, is pointless, based on the false premise that there are millions of Brits beavering away in Victorian conditions for little money in insecure self-employment. Actually, we’re quite happy, Matthew. The vast majority of us are self-employed because we like it that way. We are not looking for a job, nor extra hours.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), this supposed great mass of unhappy freelancers is virtually non-existent – a figment of the imagination of leftish people like Matthew Taylor, a former policy wonk for Tony Blair. People who are working part-time in self-employment because they wanted a full-time job but couldn’t find one make up well under 0.1