LFIG Report: The Freelancing Agenda

Updated on September 17, 2014by LFIG Editor - From LFIG website

A new LFIG report calls for freelancing to be placed at the heart of the Labour party’s policy agenda. “Freelancers and the self-employed deserve to have their own policy agenda and framework” says Philip Ross author of the new Labour Finance and Industry Report entitled ‘The Freelancing Agenda’ and he suggests that. “Labour is a strong position now to lead on this agenda”.

The report, published on Monday 15^th September, will be followed by a special fringe event launch at the Labour conference. It aims to construct a policy framework by proposing a charter for freelancing along with three other key policies designed to empower freelancers and bring them the recognition they deserve.

The report is published as a short booklet, it looks at the size of the freelance economy, the lack of definition and recognition that freelancing faces and the evolution of the market. The report recognises that freelancers range from precariat workers through to independent professionals but there is commonality between all the groups. It discusses the evolution of the freelancing market, the need for agency freelancers to use limited liability companies. It differentiates genuine freelancers from those using the model for tax avoidance and those in forced self employment. One of the recommendations includes a well thought out proposal to create a special freelancer limited company (FLTD) which it suggests will allow some of the onerous and unachievable requirements of IR35 to be toned down.

The LFIG report has been written with Prof. Andrew Burke who holds the Bettany Chair and is the founding Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield University. Philip Ross is a former freelancer and a well known writer and activist on freelancing issues. He is a member of LFIG and the author of the book about the founding of the PCG – Freedom to Freelance.

Philip Ross, explains “the report was able to build on both our personal experience and professional knowledge of the freelancing industry and has been supplemented by meetings with freelancer groups, trade associations and trade unions”.

“We have spoken to actors, journalists, artists, pharmacists, IT workers, management consultants, construction workers, teachers, film and television workers, agencies, accountants, tax specialists and more besides”.

“For too long policies of all parties have focused on the extremes of the freelance economy, tax avoidance on one hand and forced self employment on the other. This report focuses on the forgotten middle, genuine freelancers, a market that is as broad as it is wide. It offers a proactive agenda as opposed to reactionary one that will help freelancing flourish.

The report offers the chance for Labour to seize the initiative and clearly differentiate itself as the most progressive and innovative party in this area”.

“The key message from the report is for policy makers to take freelancing seriously, and we have named the report ‘The Freelancing Agenda’ because it is about starting that debate and discussion around freelancing issues and what needs to be done”

The report and recommendations are centred on a radical and innovative Freelancers’ Charter.

Philip Ross says “The objective of the Charter is to provide a platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps that would operate on the platform.”

“Just as Apple wrote the platform and got others to write the apps, our aim with the report is to provide a platform upon which others can engage and be empowered and develop policies”

“We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own policies or Apps and these include the creation of a Freelancing Limited Company and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for freelancers. We’d encourage other organisations and groups to develop their apps or policies to work from the platform.”

“We have adopted this approach because we acknowledge that freelancing has a wide constituency with independent professionals at one end and precariat workers at the other. We wanted to create a platform to enable others to innovate on”.

“Above all, the Freelancing Agenda aims to kick start a proper and informed debate to help Labour build a new economy that recognises and levers the power of the freelancers and the self employed to deliver prosperity”.

“I know it has radical elements, the voice of freelancers and the self-employed need to be heard and this and report set to empower them and the enable a future Labour government to deliver for them”. Says Philip

Download the report (PDF)

Self-Employed Face Strong “Cost of Living” Headwinds

Posted on September 11, 2014by Philip Ross - From the LFIG website

We need a government minister with direct responsibility for freelancers

Almost every week I seem to come across a story in the press about some super executives and their mega salaries which are meekly justified by their board members who insist that they are worth the money.

The myth is that the recovery is being driven by some sort of battalion of super star executives. The reality I feel is somewhat different. This isn’t a recovery led by the genius of these superstars but by working people from the ground, the vanguard of which are the self-employed.

According to the ONS monthly Labour force survey, self-employment accounts for almost two-fifths (38%) of new jobs created since 2010 and the self employed make up almost one in six of those in work. Indeed, the RSA recently reported that the number of people working as self employed is set to out strip those working in the public sector by 2016.

Unfortunately unlike our battalion of super hero executives the self-employed have not fared well in the cost of living crisis since 2010. According to analysis done by Labour their incomes have fallen on average by £2,000 a year. None of us in regular employment have done that well, with incomes falling by 9% but for the self-employed it is a fall of 14%.

Labour has had to do its own analysis because the ONS figures don’t include it, so Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna have written to Sir Andrew Dilnot, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, to ask him to examine whether new measures are needed to fully take into account the earnings of self-employed people.

The world of work is changing with this growth in self-employment which includes those setting up traditional businesses as well as those working freelance. Springing up all over the country are a large number of workspaces or hubs where the self-employed can come and work in a collective workspace.

Some, I know, bury their heads in the sand and insist there should only be permanent full time jobs for everyone. Though people can support that sentiment, the reality is that people have lost faith in many of our institutions and the ability of business to provide them work and so are moving towards self employment for both economic and personal reasons.

I met people at one of these hubs who said they would like permanent employment, but there aren’t any jobs so they are working for themselves. Yet, they noted, they feel ignored by policy makers who only pay attention to the margins of what they do by just focusing on those abusing self employment for tax avoidance or those being exploited by being forced into self employment.

They want recognition, as they feel like the forgotten middle who are marginalised and outside the system. They are not employees so the unions tend to see past them or even see them as a threat. They are not all super rich, as the statistic show quite the opposite and many need to interface with the benefits system.

This policy agenda and constituency hasn’t gone unnoticed. The report published by Labour’s Small Business Task Force in March 2013 (An Enterprising Nation) identified that more work needed to be done on the freelancing agenda. As a result LFIG commissioned myself, Philip Ross, as a former freelancer and Prof Andrew Burke from Cranfield University to develop the report.

The report was able to build on both our personal experience and professional knowledge of the freelancing industry and has been supplemented by meetings with freelancer groups, trade associations and trade unions.

The key message from the report is for policy makers to take freelancing seriously, and we have named the report ‘The Freelancer Agenda’ because it is about starting that debate and discussion around freelancing issues and what needs to be done.

The report and recommendations are centred around a radical and innovative ‘Freelancers’ Charter’. The objective of the Charter is to provide a platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps that would operate on the platform. I did this because I felt that we should learn the lessons from business where Apple and others realised that success can come from developing the platform upon which others can develop the Apps. So it should be for policies.

We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own policies or Apps and these include the creation of a Freelancing Limited Company and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for freelancers. We’d encourage other organisations and groups to develop their apps or policies to work from the platform.

We have adopted this approach because we acknowledge that freelancing has a wide constituency with independent professionals at one end and precariat workers at the other. We wanted to create a platform to enable others to innovate on.

There is a shared agenda for freelancers and a lot common purpose between all groups. I hope that this report can help all groups come together and build an agenda for the common good.

Philip Ross is a member of the Labour Finance and Industry Group.

Note: The report will be formally launched at the LFIG fringe meeting at the Labour conference on Tuesday 23rd September at 5:30pm, though the report is available from the LFIG website as from 16th September.

Put freelancers at the heart of policy making

LFIG have published their new report entitled 'The Freelancing Agenda' this article explains the reasoning behind the report and the need for Labour to focus on the self employed as well as small business.

Labour must be the party both of and for the self employed and small business if it is to win the next election. It is on strong ground as it has an excellent Labour Business team who are widely respected. Labour’s grassroots are being filled with those who run their own businesses, work as self employed or as freelance. It is growing to become a key constituency both within the Labour party and within society.

In March 2013, Labour’s Small Business Task Force report, ‘An Enterprising Nation’, made recommendations to the Labour Party for policies to help small businesses. The report looked in part at freelancing and self-employment, and suggested that ‘greater clarity around the distinction between genuine freelancing and false self-employment is required to enable small businesses to use freelancers legitimately’.

The publication of  our report entitled ‘The Freelancing Agenda’, commissioned by the Labour Finance and Industry Group, comes partly in response to that. It offers a set of principles, in the form of a Charter, and some specific policy recommendations, including a new definition of freelancing for tax and other purposes, that can help Labour to update its policies for this constituency, by enhancing, not compromising, the party’s core values. Labour needs to offer both a small business agenda and also one for the self employed too.

Last week Demos published a report in this area entitled ‘Going it alone’, its author Duncan O’Leary noted that “The Labour party has an uneasy relationship with self-employment. Fears of tax evasion by high earners and the exploitation of low earners dominate the party’s discourse. The policy focus is on stamping out abuse, rather than supporting those for whom self-employment is an active choice”.

These are the goals of our freelancers’ charter. To provide a positive agenda for the self employed that Labour can embrace.  

Our report is published as a short booklet, it looks at the size of the freelance economy, the lack of definition and recognition that freelancing faces and the evolution of the market. The report recognises that freelancers range from precariat workers through to independent professionals but there is commonality between all the groups. It discusses the evolution of the freelancing market and the need for agency freelancers to use limited liability companies. It differentiates genuine freelancers from those using the model for tax avoidance and those in forced self employment. One of the recommendations includes a well thought out proposal to create a special freelancer limited company (FLTD) which it suggests will allow some of the onerous and unachievable requirements of IR35 to be toned down and will allow for clearer identification of freelancers.

We see the Charter as providing a platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps that would operate on the platform.”

We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own policies or Apps and these include the creation of this Freelancing Limited Company (FLTD) and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for freelancers.

It is timely because the ONS have reported that the growth in self employment outstrips new jobs[1].Mike Cherry the Policy Chairman for the FSB has said that it represents a ‘structural change’ in the labour market and is here to stay. The RSA recently reported that the number of people working as self-employed is set to outstrip those working in the public sector by 2016.

To write the report we have spoken to individuals and groups representing actors, journalists, artists, pharmacists, IT workers, management consultants, construction workers, teachers, film and television workers, agencies, accountants, tax specialists and more besides. Interestingly the two consistent issues coming through are for .’clarity and parity’. For the independent professionals this is clarity over their status as self-employed and parity with other businesses also competing for business. They want to the chance to compete fairly and be judged as being in business on their own account. For the precariat workers and others they want parity with other workers when they have to interface with the benefits system and clarity over how they can receive fair treatment at work. All sight the right to be paid and the right to be paid on time as key requirements. While it is outrageous to pay wages late large firms seems to get away with the late payment of small businesses.

Our report concludes that freelancers are not small businesses in the traditional sense, that they are instead their own economic agents often with premium and important skills which have allowed small firms to innovate and grow. That they are drivers of economic growth. I see that in effect just as every small shop doesn’t want to be the next Tesco’s not every IT freelancer wants to be the next Google. The growth isn’t in their own businesses but elsewhere in the economy. They are not a competing shadow workforce but positive complementary one which deserves recognition and be protected and nurtured.

There is a shared agenda for freelancers and a lot common purpose between all groups. I hope that this report can help all groups come together and build a positive agenda for the common good. The LFIG report offers the chance for Labour to seize the initiative and clearly differentiate itself as the most progressive and innovative party in this area and clearly identify itself as for the party for the self-employed. We encourage you to read the report, review the charter and help put the issue of freelancing and the self-employed on the agenda for the general election.

Philip Ross is a member of LFIG and the lead author the report ‘The Freelancing Agenda’.

A PDF copy of the report can be found on the Labour Finance and Industry website or here

A kindle copy of the report can be found on Amazon and printed copy here.

---

[1] http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2014/02/20/growth-in-self-employment-outstrips-new-jobs-shows-ons-data.aspx

Innovation and the Digital Economy: Empowering Freelancers and small business to deliver prosperity

At this year's Labour Conference in 2014 the Forum is working with the Labour Finance and Industry Group to host a fringe meeting again on small business.

For the third year running the premium small business event will be run by LFIG and the LSBF. Our small business event is a Labour small business event in so far as it put on by party members, the forum and LFIG who are Labour supporters and members. 

This year's theme is the digital economy, small business and freelancers.

Tuesday 23rd September 2014

RadissonBlue Edwardian Hotel.
Dickens\Thackery Room

5:25pm – Introduction by David Offenbach, Chairman of LFIG.

Part 1: Freelancers in the Progressive Economy

5:30 – 5:55pm

This will be the conference launch of LFIG’s report on freelancing for a progressive economy.

Summary details of the report will be detail with comment from a panel of freelancing experts plus Labour’s Chair of the Business Interest Group.

Chaired by Karen Landles LFIG
Philip Ross LFIG (Report’s author)
Seema  Malhotra  MP  - Chair of Labour Business Interest Group
Duncan O’Leary – DEMOS
Benedict Dellot - Royal Society of Arts. (invited)
Simon McVicker  PCG
<5 minute BREAK>

Part 2a:  Startups and Small Business – delivering digital transformation

6:00 – 7:00pm

This is the main event with a key note address from Labour’s small business minister.
3-5 minutes for each panel member, summed up by Toby Perkins. Then 30 minutes of questions from the floor. 

Chair : Philip Ross LFIG
Toby Perkins MP – Shadow Small Business Minister
Richard Howitt MEP
Mike Cherry - Policy Chair of the  Federation of Small Business
Bill Thomas – Chair of Labour’s small business taskforce
Seema  Malhotra  MP  - Chair of Labour Business Interest Group
Kate Godfrey PPC for Stafford

John Midgley (Head of Public Policy, Intuit UK)
James Waterworth (Vice President, CCIA Europe)

Part 2b : Open mic on small business and digital transformation

Time : 7:05 – 7:30

Open mic for audience to pitch ideas to previous panel on digital economy, freelancing and small business issues.  

Chaired by Ajay Nehru of LFIG
#LFIGDigital  #LFIG-OpenMic2014

Party conference buzzes with small business debate

Small business is growing big at conference both in the hall on Labour’s policy agenda and on the fringe. When Ed Miliband declared in his conference speech - ‘One Nation Labour – the party of small business’ it was less of an aspiration and more of an observation. Much credit is due to Labour’s  excellent business team - including not just Chuka Umanna (who was raised in small business household) but Toby Perkins and Ian Murray who both ran their own firms before entering Parliament - and an energising team supporting them.

In March the ‘An Enterprising Nation’ report published by Labour’s Small Business Task Force recommended the introduction of regional banks to support small business but was also ‘fizzing’ with other new ideas and looking at the whole scale of small business innovation and activity from the large small firms down to importance of the freelance worker to the economy.

Ed’s conference speech noted that ‘For too long in this country, we’ve supported some businesses and not others. Most of the jobs of the future are going to be created in a large number of small businesses’. He explained that since Tories came to office they ‘cut taxes for large business by £6bn but raised taxes on small businesses’ and that they had short changed small firms and to put it right announced that Labour will cancel a 1% reduction in corporation tax that would have benefited a small number of large business and instead offer a cut in business rates which will benefit 1.5m small firms by at least £450 a year each.

If the policy announcements in the hall were demonstrating Labour is the party for small business, then the conference fringe showed that it is becoming the party of small business. Gone are the days when the only small business fringe events are held by external groups.

 Progress hosted an excellent fringe event on Monday with Toby Perkins MP. The main point of the event with Shawbrook bank was about getting funding to small business. Shawbrook’s stated modus operandi is not to feed figures into a computer and get an answer but to make decisions based on getting to know a business. Beyond this there was discussion about the need for better mentoring between small business people, some of which has been lost since 2010.

On Tuesday LFIG and the Labour Small Business Forum’s event sponsored by the Process and Packaging Machinery Association realised that they needed a big room for small business after their fringe event became standing room only with 70+ and others unable to fit in. I chaired the meeting and we began with a large Labour panel - Toby Perkins MP, Bill Thomas - Chair of Labour’s Small Business Taskforce, Victoria Groulef - PPC Reading West, Debbie Abrahams MP chair of the all-party inquiry into late payments <link to progress article> and Prof. Andrew Burke - self-employment and freelancing - from Cranfield University, though independent was a member of Labour’s small business taskforce.

The discussion was wide ranging, also touching on the issues of funding and mentoring but also included the role and importance of freelancers in the economy to the issue of late payments and the need for small business to have a higher profile in a future - something that seems to be clearly on the cards.

Some panel members asked to leave early for another function so in demonstrating our understanding of flexible working we let them go and brought in as freelance replacements : Mike Cherry National Policy Chairman from the FSB and Simon McVicker of the PCG.

There is a real appetite for this discussion in the Labour party and the future candidates programme is also delivering small business candidates at the next general election - though a few more are needed. But the most rewarding part of the meetings was the realisation that the majority of the attendees and all the questions came from delegates and Labour party members. On the evidence of conference alone Labour is clearly becoming both the party of and for small business.

Philip Ross
Labour Small Business Forum and LFIG
The LFIG fringe event was kindly sponsored by the Process and Packaging Machinery Association

LFIG \ LSBF Fringe event packed out

Last night's fringe event with LFIG on small business was packed out. We need a bigger room next year.

Many thanks to the PPMA for sponsoring the event

Some of the speakers had to leave early because of the conference dinner so we rolled Mike Cherry, National Policy Chairman from the FSB and Simon McVicker onto the panel as it discussed issues ranging from freelancing to late payments.

Some pictures below and further report to follow...

Top Labour fringe on small business - Tuesday 24th September

Once again the LSBF and LFIG are leading the way at the Labour conference with a major fringe event promoting small business. This year Toby Perkins MP, small business minister speaks again as well as Bill Thomas chairman of Labour's small business task force along with Prof, Andrew Burke from Cranfield University who will speak about the importance of freelancers.

An Enterprising Nation—How Small Firms, Freelancers and Self-Employed can Flourish Under Labour

Time: 18:30-20:00 (Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel—Surrey Suite 1), Tuesday 24th September 2013

Twitter: #EnterpriseNation

Featuring:

Philip Ross (Labour Small Business Forum – Chair)

Toby Perkins MP (Shadow Minister for Small Busiensses)

Victoria Groulef (Labour PPC for Reading West)

Bill Thomas (Chairman of Labour's small business task force)

Andrew Burke (Labour Small Business Taskforce)

- See more at: http://www.lfig.org/event/lfig-at-labour-party-conference-2013-an-enterprising-nation-how-small-firms-freelancers-and-self-employed-can-flourish-under-labour/#sthash.vsu6ywBf.dpuf

Becoming the party of small business

Is Labour becoming the party of and for small business? It certainly seemed like it last Monday when I joined with a few hundred others who were members of Labour Entrepreneurial and Small Business network at Brixton Market to celebrate the release of the report from Labour’s independent task force on small business. What is interesting is the growing momentum behind such events as they seem to be getting larger and larger and have more and more of a buzz each time. 

There is a real meeting of minds because Labour is beginning really to get and understand the small business economy and its 88 page report - for the Policy Review - included over 100 recommendations is proof of that. But it is not the only evidence, the other interesting thing is that business realises that Labour understands what it is about because Labour’s comments about wealth and enterprise are not simply old-rhetoric but are based on real understanding. For instance Chuka has recently said that he has banned his team from using the phrase ‘SME’, because he considers it to be too broad a definition of small firms, encompassing as it does the self employed right up to the 250 person enterprise. Labour it seems is not proposing a one size fits all model for business but a truly tailored approach. 

To appreciate why this is you simply need to look at Labour’s business team. It is headed by Chukka Umunna whose father came to this country and established his own small firm. From what Chuka says and does it is clear that this isn’t simply another brief but it is in his blood. Alongside him is Toby Perkins the MP for Chesterfield. Toby ran his own small business before entering Parliament so when he goes around talking to small firms around the country he understands what it is like to raise finance and to employ people and the burden of regulation. In the Lords they have Parry Mitchell who as a serial entrepreneur founded three companies all of which grew to be market leaders. Backing them there seems to be a brilliant team of advisors and as the cold evening in  Brixton showed party members and other are confident to show their colours as small business people for and in the Labour Party. As for the Task Force report it was originally headed by the brilliant Nigel Dougherty who spearheaded process forward but suffered a sad and untimely death last year. It was picked up by Bill Thomas formerly of HP who has expertly brought together business representatives, academics and entrepreneur and put together the report.

Another pointer to this great understanding is that the report wasn’t launched at some fancy offices in Canary Wharf or at some bank, but in Brixton Market. Labour realises that the beating heart of enterprise in our country isn’t in board rooms of venture capitalists but with the self-employed; the white van man, the freelancer; the market firm and the small enterprise. While many in the Labour Party still cling to the belief that the next election is going to fought on a platform on health and education the truth is different. The battle field is going to be growth and prosperity and is going to be fought around how that can be delivered. Labour is positioning itself clearly to say that it will be delivered through small business and that their values are one and same as ours. Previously Labour governments worked hard to help small business but there was always a feeling that they were at arms lengths from small business. But from what I saw and heard on Monday and saw in the report, Labour had moved from nodding terms with small business to a proper handshake and hopefully onwards to a full embrace. The idea that Labour should be the party of and for small business, isn’t rhetoric and it has moved beyond simply aspiration and is on course to become a tangible reality.

Philip Ross is a member of LFIG and the founder of the Labour Small Business Forum which wants to build a network of Labour members in small business and identify those in every constituency. To get involved contact Philip at rosspe@talk21.com  #philiprosslgc

A second article on the Task Force Report will be published later this week

Rights under attack

Chukka Umunna has written to Labour members asking them to lobby their MPs to vote against the plans  to strip away employment rights.  This is wha he says :

Dear Friend

Tomorrow the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats are launching their latest assault on the British worker and we urgently need your help to defeat a bill that could adversely affect the lives of millions of people.

Vince Cable and the Tory-led government will bring their Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill back to the House of Commons to try and turn it into Law.

I need your help right now to make sure as many MPs as possible vote against the ERR bill tomorrow.

Click here to ask your MP to vote against this bill which strips workers of vital employment protections

This ERR bill will:

• Water down the rights of all employees in this country
• The time an employee is required to be employed before they are able to claim for unfair dismissal has already been raised from one year to two, and now these proposals will reduce the amount of compensation unfairly dismissed workers can receive
• Reduce protections for whistleblowers at work.

If the government can get this Bill passed they’ll also allow employers to make minimal offers to workers to leave, then gag those same workers from even mentioning this at employment tribunal.

Not content with action that will leave thousands in fear for their jobs – the government’s bill will also abolish the Human Rights Commission’s duty to promote a society free of discrimination. It is disgraceful that Ministers should pretend abolishing action to end discrimination should be part of anything called an ‘enterprise’ bill.

The Labour position is very clear – we will be voting against the Bill this week. 

We do not want to make it easier for bosses to sack people, we want to make it easier for firms to hire. Nothing less than real action to help the economy will do, and sweeping aside workers rights is only going to make things much, much worse.

We will not stand for it. 

Please click here to ask your MP to vote against the ERR bill tomorrow

Thank you,

Chuka

Chuka Umunna MP

Member of Parliament for Streatham

Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation &Skills

De-mutualising fairness at work?

Perhaps if I owned a Bentley and was asked to give it up I wouldn’t find it that hard to do as I have never been in a position to own or use a Bentley, I don’t really know what they are worth. Just as the Tory frontbench think it will be all right for people to give up their employment rights. They have never had real jobs, never needed such rights and have no appreciation of what they are worth.

But I can’t understand how people would give up their rights to unfair dismissal from their jobs and their family income? Or, to put it another way, how could people give up their rights to be treated fairly? Do such rights have a value? To some they have no value and to some they are just a cost.

But we in the Labour movement, and I as a member of the Labour Small Business Forum, know they had a cost – one of over a 100 years of campaigning of hardships and struggle. To us they have a priceless value as those who went before us sacrificed to make them possible. They understood the fallacy of relying on just the good character of their employer or manager, of relying on their simple ‘benevolence’ or on their ‘charity’, or on their ‘paternalism’ – was flawed. They sought the dignity of work and fair treatment. Unions could help enforce such fair treatment, but in their absence (and outside the public sector they are largely absent) the guarantor of fair treatment is employment rights enshrined in legislation. They help make companies good places to work. To us they are priceless, but to the Tories they are valueless and costly and don’t fit inside their Downton Abbey-esque view of the world and so they propose to dispose of them.

George Osborne’s idea whereby employees can trade away their employment rights for a few plastic shares is the sort of scheme that would be rejected out of hand by the FSA as a consumer con-trick. It seems that there is to be a tariff on maternity and paternity leave and childcare. What price equality in the workplace? Ask George. What is the value of family life and the right to take time off unpaid when your children are ill? Ask George. Can Dad’s take time off too? What is the value of speaking out against bullies in the workplace? Ask George. They plan to buy us all off.

For Osborne has ready a great scheme to de-mutualise the fair society. I know that none of them have had a job outside of politics. They don’t know what it is like to start a new job and find slipped in with your new contract a form asking you to waive the working-time directive. They don’t know what it is like to see their friends lose their jobs because their faces don’t fit on the day before they acquire employment rights. I do. They don’t know what it is like to see a friend return from maternity leave only to see that they have been demoted. I have seen all this in past jobs.

But I have seen also the ashen faces of managers when they realise that they can’t get away with it, that they are being judged by both moral standards and legal requirements. That they have both moral and legal responsibility to the people they employ. What keeps bad managers in check are employment rights – they are the silent guarantors of fair treatment in the workplace because bad managers are forced to work within those parameters. They mean that we don’t surrender our civil rights when we clock on, that we are going to be treated with dignity and respect at work.

I know that some abuse their rights but, ironically, most of the cases I know of occur in the public sector and not the private sector. When cases do go to tribunals and the employees win, how can that be a travesty of justice? How can the fact that someone can prove that they have been discriminated against, abused or bullied be wrong?

I am all for employee ownership of shares and all for helping small firms recruit new staff and to grow small business ownership but there needs to be a fair balance of rights and responsibilities between staff and employers. Stripping away employment rights isn’t the solution.

Ironically if you own shares in many companies you can’t sell them on the open market and often have to sell them back to the company when you leave. So the company AGMs will be a hoot – since unless the staff vote through what the management want they could get the sack and lose their shares. It is Conservative democracy in action. Only they could come up with such a plan, as only they are so out of touch with the real world.

By Philip Ross - originally published by Progress 

http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/10/10/defending-rights-at-work/

PradRad meeting to take up small business issues

The next PradRad meeting on Wednesday 17th October has speakers taking up small business issues :

Proactive Small Business Promotion Agencies In Central and Local Government Small and medium sized businesses employ around half the UK work force. We need to end the Thatcher/Reagan consensus about unfettered free markets and instead have SME advocates in the heart of government charged with encouraging growth in this sector.
Cllr Steve Cowan, Leader of Opposition Hammersmith and Fulham Council
@stephencowan


Tackling Late Payment to Help Small Firms Survive and GrowToo many organisations still manage their cashflow by stringing their smaller suppliers along, which makes it harder for small firms to grow and can drive them under. Suppliers have the right to sue for payment but understandably rarely use this, and the voluntary approach to encourage prompt payment has its limitations. Large firms, public bodies and charities – including privatised utilities, local authorities and subsidiaries of overseas companies – should be required by law to publish their independently audited payment practices in their annual reports, enabling the worst offenders to be publicly named and shamed.
Ben Coleman, Self Employed,  Member of Labour’s Small Business Taskforce. (Secretary of Hammersmith CLP).


See : 

http://pragmaticradicalism.co.uk/top-of-the-policies-on-industrial-policy-chaired-by-iain-wright-mp-17-october-barley-mow-westminster

Why we must teach girls to code

by vijay riyait.


In the current debate about the schools exam system, the discussion has been based on the type of examination system that kids leaving school at 16 should undertake. While this is an important issue it fails to focus on the type of knowledge we would like our children to develop and how that learning should be relevant for today’s society and for the economic success of our country.

In the film, Dead Poet’s Society, there is a great scene in which Robin Williams explains that medicine, law, business, engineering are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life but that poetry, beauty, romance and love are the things we stay alive for. So, I want to be clear before I set out my argument that STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are not the only important ingredients for a successful country and our children need to have a broad based educational background for as long as possible before specialising.

Having said that, if we look at the statistics, women only make up 12 per cent of engineering graduates and just 2 per cent of girls take physics A Level. There has been an enduring and growing gender imbalance in STEM which severely limits the growth of this country and hugely distorts the available labour market. Computing has been falling in popularity overall as a subject and at degree level, 91 per cent of computing/engineering students are male. The last Labour government set up the UK Resource Centre for Women to advance gender equality and diversity from the classroom to the boardroom in science, engineering and technology. However, progress has been slow, painfully so. What we need, and the thing which government is bad at doing, is leading a cultural shift about the way we see the role of women and how women view the opportunities available for themselves. In India, you are far more likely to a see a female programmer than in the UK and this is in a large way due to the fact that computing is seen as a valuable part of the overall economic engine. It is a way for women to have careers and get paid well and be respected in Indian society.

The current government has taken steps to change the way ICT is taught in schools and a move away from just teaching computer packages and towards a curriculum which has had input from companies such as Microsoft, Google and organisations such as the British Computing Society. This is all goods news but we can do more and we can and must do more at grass-roots levels as the ICT changes won’t occur until 2014. There has been a growing movement to take computing for girls into the heart of communities and to inspire them to work on simple programming tasks. I would like Labour to support not only changes to the school curriculum but to support these initiatives at the local level (in our poorest areas) and to put them higher up the political agenda.  I would also contend that KS3 is not early enough to catch the imagination of many girls and to challenge stereotypes and this must be done by at least KS2. We need young role models to take the message that computing is for you as a girl and that you can still do all the things that other girls do and not be considered ‘strange’ and ‘weird’.

A major part of our future economic success in our evolving digital age in the 21st Century will depend upon whether we can involve our young women and not so young women (computing skills are blind to the age of the person) in taking up careers in software development. The best way to see what can be achieved with people willing to make a difference can be seen by the energy and passion of a daughter of a good friend of mine in Canada who is an award winning technology business woman. Her daughter, Genevieve L’Esperance has been teaching girls coding and this video conveys more than my words can ever do.

(From Progress)

Party of Small Business!

By vijay riyait.


As a former secretary of the Federation of Small Businesses in Leicester, the easiest way for me to bring an unnerving quiet to a room of small business owners used to be to say that I was a Labour party member. In my experience, small businesses have had a distrust of all politicians for many years, believing that they favour the corporates of the world. They know that politicians always promise to understand their concerns and their struggles but deep down they are not really convinced that they do. With the decline in trust in the political class in general, this, I believe, is echoed in the small business world. Small business owners, like many ordinary people, wondering whether politicians or even politics has the answer. Labour has to show that politics does matter in small business in supporting and valuing it.

So, where has this attitude come from about Labour from small business owners? There is the usual that Labour can’t manage the economy effectively. This is normally expressed by them saying ‘if we ran our businesses like Labour ran the economy, we would’ve been bust long ago’. Then there are the regulations, which they see as Labour dramatically increasing in their time in office. But really it’s the fact that they do not believe that Labour shares their values of entrepreneurship, hard work, self-reliance and building wealth.

If we look at the numbers, there are 4.5 million small businesses. SMEs account for 99 per cent of all businesses, 58.8 per cent of private sector employment and 48.8 per cent of private sector turnover. SMEs employ an estimated 13.8 million people and have an estimated £1,500bn turnover. From these few facts, it’s clear that SMEs are the life blood of our economy. They’re the engine room of growth of the UK and the employer of most of our fellow citizens.

Labour needs a culture shift to understand small businesses and their owners and what they contribute to the economic success of our nation but also, just as importantly, what they contribute to the wellbeing of local communities. I work with a project called ProHelp run by Leicestershire Cares, which brings together SMEs who give pro bono support to charitable and community organisations. They regularly give tens of thousands of pounds of vital support per year, often being the difference between the community organisation surviving or failing.
While Labour was right to bring in the minimum wage and champion current campaigns like the living wage we also have to work to make the life of small business owners easier, allow them to grow, find new markets and adopt innovative practices. Labour does have a good story to sell on enterprises with our strong links with the cooperative movement and the social enterprise model.

How do we make this cultural shift? It requires building relationships with small businesses in our community, understanding their issues and campaigning with them to bring about change which helps the businesses to be more successful. In Leicester West CLP we’re working together with Movement for Change to set up a Leicester Business Forum where the local Labour party can engage with business owners, listen to them and act on their concerns. This is vitally important for us in Leicester Labour as the national conference of the Federation of Small Businesses is in Leicester in 2013, so this presents us with a huge opportunity to show Labour can be the party of small business and entrepreneurship. It’s only through true understanding at a grassroots level can Labour hope to build the national policies that will see the SME sector lead us out of this economic depression.

Published in Progress Online

Fringe Success!

There were many themes to this years Labour conference, but a strong one much to surprise was that of small business. Labour ran a business day on the Monday in which the shadow cabinet met with business people from all over the country. Then on the Monday there was an open microphone session in Manchester Central where delegates and representatives could put their questions to the Labour business team. There were a few good fringe events too, with the Fabians doing one on the changing nature of work. The Federation of Small Business also invited Ed Balls a meeting. There had been much talk about finance, innovation and the changing of the work place. That small business will be the driver that propels the economy forward was common currency.  The recovery will not be led by a few large firm but by many small ones. The need to empower small business isn’t just about the economy it is about empowering a generation.

Then on the Tuesday Ed Milliband had used his conference speech to tell people the small businessman Arthur Henderson whose firm had been let down by the banks and the financial institutions. Bank are there he noted to serve business it is not the other way round. This echoes strongly opinions and discussions already taking place in the City among institutions themselves about where it all went wrong and what they need to do to fix it.

In the evening it was the turn of the Labour Small Business Forum. The Forum is a network of Labour members and supporters who work for themselves or in a small business and we held our fringe meeting and invited speakers to come and talk with us. Instead of being external organisation coming to talk to Labour the idea of the forum is for us to talk about small business ourselves as we are the party of small business. The distinction is that instead of small business coming to the party to talk to the members to raise issues, we the network  and members ask them to discuss with us. The distinction between the two positions may sound small but it is important. The aim of the Labour Small Business Forum is that Labour if is to become the party for small business, it needs to be the party OF small business. Which means that we need to organise the thousands of people in the party working for or in small firms or as self-employed.

We had the best small business line up at conference. After my introduction in which I stressed the importance of modernising the way we work and supporting emerging firms and freelance working, John Walker the national chairman of the Federation of Small Business picked up on my comments about IR35 and agreed that it was a complicated and unwieldy tax that has not been resolved and was a bar for going into business. He reiterated the familiar problems that small businesses have with getting hold of finance from the banks. Confidence in financial institutions is a problem and he made reference to the mis-selling of interest rate swaps to many of his members. This chimed with what Ed had said during his speech. As a policy call he suggested that it was hard for small firms to initially grow and take on people and suggested offering an NI holiday to firms that did this.

He was followed by Dr Jo Twist of the UKIE (the trade association for the UK’s games industry), her points neatly dovetailed with his as she talked about the phenomena of crowdfunding which was a way that investors could lend to companies directly using the internet as a platform and thereby circumnavigating the banks. Which the chair noted that commentators saying that pouring subsidy into banking may end up destroying this new innovation’. Jo explained how in the USA they have passed the JOBS Act which makes it easier for this sort of lending to take place and now places like Silicon Valley are a light with such funding. She said the FSA need s to make similar allowances in the UK. She had discussed this recently with Harriet Harman at a round table session.  The other issue have for their members and the growing number of small micro-firms that start in the games is the training and skills and they have lobbied successfully to reintroduce coding into the curriculum at school. So people will not only know how to use WORD but could write one too. Her policy call was to offer to collaborate with Labour in delivering an excellent technical baccalaureate.

Following on the theme of innovation was RichardLittle from the PPMA. Richard who has a manufacturing background whose success comes in part from design and development talked about the need for Britain to celebrate its status as a nation of inventors and innovators, rather than being embarrassed by it. He suggested also a scheme whereby people could sign over unwanted patents to the state as an endowment and also for Government to make it easy to take advantage of new inventions and innovations in places like the NHS. He said he would know we were successful when we started putting up statues to inventors again, like the one for Greathead near Bank Station in London.

Emily Thomas, who had been a special advisor at the Treasury and the DTi talked about the difficulties in setting employee owned business and the amount of bureaucracy that is in involved. She noted that only 14-15% of entrepreneurs are women and we need to do something to level the playing field so women can go into business. She noted that women are often suited to business as it can offer flexibility. Discussions noted  that it was also about modernising both tax and public services too so they work for the 21st century. She noted that Government spends billions of pounds each year on procurement and needs to do more to ensure that more of these contracts go to small firms.

In answer to the other panellist Shadow Minister Toby Perkins MP, who had run his own firm before entering Parliament acknowledged the concerns raised by the other speakers and was interested in the points raised by Richard Little on patents. He pledged that Labour would support

Vince Cable's plans for a British Investment bank, though he suspected that the coalition may not complete delivery of it but Labour would finish off when re-elected.  He noted the importance of skills and the technical baccalaureate and welcomed Jo Twists discussions about crowdfunding. He noted too the diversity of ownership but the need to encourage and support more enterpreneurs (as he had been himself).

The meeting rounded off with a number of questions from the audience whose number now included Chris Leslie MP who came to listen and seemed also pleased at the enthusiasm and passion that the meeting was showing for small business and Labour.

Invention and Innovation - Foundations for success

Our small business fringe meeting was addressed by Richard Little of the PPMA. He talked about the great British success story of innovation and invention and his contribution was widely discussed by members of the forum and those at the the event. Below is an article by Richard covering his main themes.

Ukie CEO offers to work with Labour on new ‘TechBacc’ to create a new generation of digital creative entrepreneurs

 October 2012 - London, United Kingdom – 

CEO of games and interactive entertainment trade body Ukie, has today used a speech at the ‘How Labour can put small business first’ event, held at the party’s Conference, to comment on the announcement by Ed Milliband that Labour would introduce a new Technical Baccalaureate qualification.

Commenting on the 'TechBacc' announcement, Dr Twist said: "We need more young people knowing how to code, how to be creative with code, and how to be the next generation of digital entrepreneurs, so I welcome any announcement that looks at how we can improve how people learn relevant skills that allow them to work with and create technology. I would welcome the opportunity to work with the Labour party so that the Technical Baccalaureate can be rigorous and relevant to create this new generation."

Dr Twist further emphasised the importance of skills to the UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry, particularly of getting children learning computer science and art:

Dr Twist said that work should continue with this government to deliver the skills required by the games industry: “Through our Next Gen Skills campaign, we have successfully called for computer science to be introduced on to the national curriculum and as of this month it is there. But the job is not yet done and we now need enough teachers to teach it, in an engaging and exciting way.

But we also need artists, as it is in the mix of technology and art that much innovation comes from. Our education system needs to recognise this and encourage cross over and collaboration between different educational disciplines.”

Dr Twist also used the ‘How Labour can put small business first’ event to call for more to be done to improve access to finance for the UK’s games businesses, citing crowdfunding as a viable and sustainable source of non-bank lending.

Dr Twist said: “As an innovative industry, the games industry is always embracing innovative funding models. And we’re seeing more and more games companies successfully use crowdfunding to bring money to their businesses.”

The Labour SmallBusiness Forum panel, Jo Twist, Richard Little Philip Ross (chair), Toby Perkins MP, John Walker (FSB) and Emily Thomas

“We’re also seeing a number of UK crowdfunding platforms emerge. We believe that crowdfunding can fill a real gap that exists for games businesses that cannot get support from banks or VCs. However, the current regulatory system is, understandably, not designed with crowdfunding in mind and creates barriers for crowdfunding platforms to be established and to operate as effectively as possible.

“Recognition from the FSA of the existence and potential of crowdfunding as a separate, unique form of financing, followed by the creation of regulations covering crowdfunding as a distinct model or platform, will be crucial in accelerating the growth of this industry and its offering to the wider UK economy.”