Clearer, aligned legislation
Codify the principal status tests, bring tax and rights closer together and rationalise the overlapping deeming provisions that apply across the labour supply chain.
Policy paper · Third Edition
A practical roadmap for employment status reform.
A solutions-focused programme that examines the UK labour supply chain from every angle, bringing together tax, employment rights, compliance and fraud prevention.
Download the Roadmap
01 / A solutions-focused roadmap
Practical solutions for a complex labour supply chain.
The Roadmap examines how overlapping deeming provisions, employment status rules and labour-supply models create uncertainty, risk and opportunities for fraud. Rather than treating tax, employment rights and compliance as separate issues, it considers how they interact across the chain.
It proposes solutions across tax law, employment rights, enforcement and business processes. Each problem is tested from the perspectives of workers, businesses and government, with the aim of creating a system that is clearer, fairer and harder to exploit.
The central approachLook at the whole labour supply chain. Solve connected problems together.The proposals address the legal rules, practical processes and incentives that shape how work is supplied.
02 / The programme
Four pillars for reform
The Roadmap moves from diagnosis to a practical programme for law, enforcement, rights and compliance.
Supply-chain integrity
Use stronger digital documentation and a Chain ID to make status decisions, payments and responsibility traceable from client to worker.
Rights and recognition
Address gaps in employment-rights protection, false self-employment and uncertainty at the boundary, while preserving genuine self-employment and business-to-business work.
Simpler business processes
Improve status tools, dispute resolution, project pre-approval and tax set-off so compliant organisations can act with greater confidence.
03 / What it examines
The whole system, from every perspective.
Workers and their rightsBusinesses and their responsibilitiesGovernment, enforcement and the ExchequerDeeming provisions and tax rulesEmployment status and employment rightsFraud and non-complianceIntermediaries and labour-supply modelsGenuine self-employment
04 / Download
Read the full Employment Status Roadmap.
Complete the short form to download the original third edition. The paper reflects the law and policy position at 20 October 2025. It is Rebecca Seeley Harris's independent paper and is not presented as an adopted Forum position.