Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Self-employed workers richly deserve a coronavirus bail-out

It will be impossible to calculate. There will be widespread fraud. And there is no mechanism for sending out the money. As the Chancellor Rishi Sunak scratches around for ways to bail out the UK’s five million self-employed in the same way he has done for employees he faces plenty of obstacles. No doubt his Treasury officials have come up with a list of reasons why any scheme he comes up with won’t work in practise, will prove too expensive, will break the IT system, or can’t be implemented until 2029 at the earliest.

But hold on. That’s crazy. In fact, the self-employed deserve their bail-out more than anyone. Sure, it is difficult. The self-employed don’t have regular salaries in the way employees do. And lots of them already earn plenty and may see hardly any impact on their income from the crisis; typically they already worked from home, and many have been self-isolating for years because they prefer it (if they liked other people, they’d probably be in an office somewhere). Those are all perfectly valid reservations. Against that, however, there are far better arguments for making this a moment to be generous and offering the same kind of rescue everyone else is receiving.

Such as? First and most obviously, quite a few are in genuine difficulties, and may well face financial ruin. Some people can work completely remotely, but a lot can’t. Plumbing is very tricky over the web, and painting is tough over broadband. Home tutors will struggle if the children can’t do face-to-face meetings any more. So will freelance marketing consultants and designers if they can’t get out to meetings, and if all their clients have decided to put every kind of new project on hold until the crisis blows over.

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Matthew Lynn
Written by
Matthew Lynn
Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’

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