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#5MillionVotes: Your weekly campaign round-up - week 2 and 3

• 26 Nov 2019
• Alasdair Hutchison

In IPSE’s weekly round-up of the 2019 general election, we will be looking back at the previous week’s campaign highlights affecting the self-employed and what’s coming up in the week ahead.

Over the past week

• Last night was IPSE’s first election husting in London. We had Liz Truss from the Conservatives, Bill Esterson from Labour, Ed Davey from the Liberal Democrats, Amelia Womack from the Greens and Hector Birchwood from the Brexit Party. Check back into our news page for a full round-up of the evening.

Week two of the campaign also saw manifesto launches from all the main parties. Here’s our snapshot summary:

• Conservatives hint at self-employed reform: Beyond their promise to ‘get Brexit done’, the Tories promise to “launch a review to explore how we can better support the self-employed” across tax, mortgages and broadband.
• Labour outlines more protection for freelancers: The party says it will “seek to develop tailored support and protections for the self-employed, including: collective income protection insurance schemes, annual income assessments for those on Universal Credit, and better access to mortgages and pension schemes”.
• Lib Dems lead the way on IR35: The Lib Dems are the only party to explicitly mention IR35 – alongside a proposal to end retrospective taxes like the Loan Charge they promise to “review recent proposals to change the IR35 rules”.

The week ahead

• IPSE will be publishing a summary of all the party manifestos and what they mean for self-employment later this week – keep your eyes peeled.
• Friday (29 November) sees a live TV debate from 19:00 with figures from the seven major political parties in the UK - Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Scottish National Party (SNP), Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Brexit Party.

Don’t forget!

IPSE will be hosting our second husting – the Big Freelance Debate - in Glasgow on 4 December. Candidates from all the major parties in Scotland will be there, giving you the opportunity to ask them questions about how they will support you as a self-employed person. More information is available here.

Have your say

Let your local election candidates know how they can best support you by tweeting them using the hashtag #5MillionVotes. You can find out your local candidates through Who can I vote for?