The government has opened a consultation on who counts as a worker. It names private hire drivers among the self-employed people the changes could reach. Replies close at 11.55pm on 8 January 2027. The consultation covers England, Wales and Scotland. Employment law in Northern Ireland is devolved. Nothing in the paper is law.
The document says 4.4 million people are self-employed, including many private hire, parcel and food-delivery drivers. It says some of those jobs are tightly controlled, while the person is still labelled self-employed and left without the minimum wage, holiday pay, a workplace pension or protection against unlawful deductions. It does not say how many licensed drivers that describes, and it does not class every private hire driver as a worker.
Substitution and control
A wide right to send a substitute can currently stop someone being a worker, even where a business sets the pay and the discipline. Ministers propose that a valid substitution clause should not outweigh the other signs of worker status. Control would be weighed alongside whether the person does the work themselves. They are not proposing to drop that personal-service test. Someone who does none of the work themselves would still not be a worker.
Who has to prove it
In a tribunal, the person bringing the claim currently has to show they are a worker. The paper proposes a presumption of worker status for the rights that come with it, including holiday pay, protection from being treated badly for trade-union membership, and access to a workplace pension. The business would have to show the person is not a worker. The same switch is not proposed for employee status. A dispute about whether the right amount of holiday pay was actually paid would stay as it is.
If a tribunal has already found that colleagues on broadly similar facts are workers, and the business argues the next claimant is not, that repeat could count as an aggravating feature. A tribunal can already add a penalty of £100 to £20,000 a claim, paid to the Secretary of State. The proposal is to name this kind of repeat as a reason to use that power. The paper says the power was little used: the Resolution Foundation found 50 such penalties in the five years to 2019, out of more than 55,000 successful claims.
The Fair Work Agency, which began work in April 2026, is asked what more it could do to help people and businesses work out status. Kate Dearden told the ADCU in September that bogus self-employment is unacceptable.
A written note of the job
The paper also asks about a written statement for some self-employed people. It could name both sides, the work, how long it is expected to last, when and how much they will be paid, and how it can be ended. A written contract that already contains those points could be enough. Ministers have not decided whether it should cover every self-employed person. They use a householder hiring a landscaper as the sort of job they do not want caught. Blacklisting and health and safety protections for the self-employed are also in the questions.
The tax test for employment is separate. The paper does not propose to change it.
Send views to statusconsultation@businessandtrade.gov.uk, or use the link on the consultation page.