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Philip was the original Political Director of the then-PCG and was actively involved in the campaigns against the first IR35 proposals in 1999. Here he examines some of the differences and similarities in the freeelancing world from then and now.
Philip Ross writes;
I have just returned to freelancing after a gap of some thirteen years and I have re-joined IPSE and have just been elected to their Consultative Council after something like a fourteen year gap. But who is counting?
Back in 1999 the very nature of freelancing was in jeopardy because of IR35. The original plans put forward by the Inland Revenue proposed that agencies deducted at source from freelancer monies, the tax and national insurance due. This would have set a very bad precedent and it would have created zombies workers who were neither employees or self-employed, but something in between. They would have been taxed directly as employees but without any employment rights.
Back then contractors rose up and banged the drum, rang the tocsin bell, put their hands in their pockets and their fingers to their keyboards and created the PCG, which is now known as IPSE.
The initial campaign was so effective that it led to Inland Revenue modifying their proposals to create the current, toxic but not deadly, IR35.
Today, there is a terrible similarity between those original proposals and the current HMRC proposals for freelancers working in the public sector. This time round they want the public sector to be able to tax freelancers as employees but not give them any rights. It could set a terrible precedent not just for affluent IT workers, but also for the precariat on lower incomes.
Ignorance
Back then, in 1999, some sited it as maliciousness from the Government, others said it stemmed from due to ignorance of the self-employed market and in particular the market for knowledge based workers.
Today we can’t site ignorance of freelancers, even the Prime Minister has heard of freelancing and is aware of IPSE, having recently recorded a special greeting for their self-employment conference.
In the old days if seemed as if Blair was standing on a platform to talk up entrepreneurism and the knowledge economy, while Gordon Brown was busy sawing the legs off it. I am not sure what is happening today but there doesn’t seem to be enough joined up thinking. Though that is the problem, but it is also the solution and is where IPSE can and does operate best.
Fifteen years ago, PCG and freelancers had a reputation for being quite militant; it was probably quite well deserved in some ways. Not many groups can boast that they forced BBC economic corrspondent, Evan Davis to apologise on-air for getting his facts wrong.
Freelancers were mobilised, then we had to be more militant – and radical – just to be heard. Today after years of good leadership and with a good team, we do have a seat at the table and as has been shown we can get to see Government, but are they listening?
The proposals around public sector freelance workers and the danger of those rules seeping into the private sector means that we need to get heard again and have the politicians listening.
Last time Lord Haskins said ‘I think you are quite a vocal lot and you have seriously terrified figures in Whitehall’.
In a nice way, I hope. Lord McIntosh, even though he opposed us said ‘I have never encountered such a literate, persuasive set of letters’. To be heard it may be that we need to mobilise again.
IR35
(Our first success on IR35 was actually coining the short hand to describe it, the Government - like with the poll tax - actually refused to call it IR35 to start with. So, the first competition is for the freelance community is to come up with a usable acronym…)
IPSE/PCG has won many battles in the past, especially when it has acted and led and freelancing community and worked together as a team. From my experience, it was through inaction, or when pedants had an upper hand that it floundered.
I think today we have a great team, a good and a just argument. True, we may not always get what we want, but if we work together and try hard, we might just get what we need. My advice to contractors is to be prepared to mobilise again, listen out for the tocsin bell to ring as a call to action. The very fact that we are ready and prepared will in itself strengthen the hand of IPSE in helping face down these proposals.
by Philip Ross, was one of the founders of the PCG and their first external affair director (Writing in a private capacity)
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Susie Hughes © Shout99 2016
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