Working it out
Think tank: Bright Blue
Author(s): Bartek Staniszewski; George Pickering
August 5, 2026
This report from UK think tank Bright Blue proposes a new deal for the self-employed.
The UK is currently home to 4.57 million self-employed: a number which has grown consistently over the past four decades. Yet, despite their growing numbers, the self-employed have access to a much poorer safety net than employees. This is even though the self-employed are disproportionately subject to income volatility and late payments. Indeed, this report’s original polling finds that the self-employed overwhelmingly consider the current system both inadequate and unfair.
At the same time, the tax benefits of being self-employed relative to being an employee more than outstrip the loss of publicly funded benefits that employees can access but the self-employed cannot.
In other words, employees pay more to fund a system for the self-employed which the self-employed themselves dislike.
No more. This landmark report comprehensively exposes the scale of the inadequacy of the system the self-employed are burdened with; and proposes nine policies to fix it to make it fairer both for employees and the self-employed themselves.
