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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

National accountancy firm welcomes PM’s employment law review

Leading national accountancy services provider Danbro has hailed Prime Minister Theresa May for recognising that employment rules are no longer suitable for the modern workplace.

Despite a growing demand from UK businesses for temporary workers, executive chairman of Danbro Damian Broughton said recent sweeping changes by HMRC had hit consultants and self-employed people the hardest.

The new and proposed changes to employment and tax laws are forcing some contractors to accept draconian employment terms, while others are no longer allowed to claim expenses for hotels and travel to destinations hundreds of miles away.

In launching a Government review at the Conservative Party Conference, Theresa May said she wanted to be “certain that employment regulation and practices are keeping pace with the changing world of work”.

Danbro, which is headquartered in Lytham, Lancashire, is a founding partner in trade body PRISM which has also launched a wide-ranging investigation into the impact of changes to employment laws.

Today, Danbro executive chairman Damian Broughton welcomes the Prime Ministers decision and said scrapping expenses claims for contractors, sweeping changes to intermediary rules and complex layers of legislation were all causing confusion and major issues for flexibly-employed people.

He says: “The way people work has completely transformed in recent years and employment legislation has failed to keep up. So many companies rely on freelance experts for the skills and insights they need and this will become even more important as we move towards Brexit.

“It is absolutely critical that employment legislation is overhauled to match the modern way of working and it’s fantastic that Prime Minister Theresa May has agreed to review the current system.

“We’ve fought hard for the contractors, consultants and businesses we represent across the country and we will continue to make sure their voice is heard as this review gets underway.”

Danbro is a member of trade body PRISM which has engaged independent think tank the Social Market Foundation (SMF) to carry out a review of employment and tax legislation. This review will be one of the first studies to report initial findings on this topic later this year, finally reporting in full in early 2017.

Crawford Temple, CEO of PRISM, adds: “PRISM has been campaigning for a strategic review for the past year because flexible workers are crucial to the UK’s prosperity and they have been getting a raw deal. 

“I am not just talking about how some are exploited unfairly by some in the gig economy, but about the hundreds of thousands of contractors who identify with the self-employed. They contribute so much to our economy and we need to make sure the tax and employment environment is fair and enables them to deliver the expert services that are critical to the success of so many of our businesses.”

www.danbro.co.uk