13th Report - Self-employment and the gig economy

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The Government welcomes the report and defers its response on the employment status recommendations until it responds to the Taylor Review, while responding now to the Department for Work and Pensions recommendations and not accepting some of them.

• On employment status (recommendations 1 to 4), it proposes to respond "when the Government publishes its response to the Taylor Review", which it says "will respond to them shortly".
• It does not accept that New Enterprise Allowance advisers should conduct Gateway Interviews, because the determination of gainful self-employment is made by the Secretary of State and is not delegable to a third party.
• On the Minimum Income Floor, it "cannot agree to suspend the MIF" and does not agree "that the time is right for an independent review", but will continue to monitor and evaluate the impact of self-employment as Universal Credit is rolled out.
• On pensions, it has committed to consider how self-employed people might be helped to save for retirement as part of its automatic enrolment review, and to report to Parliament on that review by the end of 2017.

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