UK's 100,000-worker minimum wage pledge may fall short, lawyers warn

Up to 100,000 UK workers could gain access to the national minimum wage and holiday pay under government plans to clamp down on bogus self-employment, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Labour Party conference last week.

Reynolds said the government would close the legal "loopholes" employers use to "define workers as self-employed when they are clearly not." He promised to "stop the most egregious examples of bogus self-employment" and "level the playing field for business," with a consultation on single worker status due later this month.

Employment lawyers, however, warn the package may deliver far less than the headline number suggests.

What is the government actually changing?

The UK currently recognises three categories — employee, worker, and self-employed — alongside a binary employed/self-employed split for tax. Reports indicate the new legislation will reduce the weight given to the "personal service" test, which asks whether an individual must perform the work themselves or can send a substitute.

That test has shaped pivotal gig-economy rulings. In 2018, the High Court held Deliveroo riders were not workers because their contracts contained a genuine substitution clause; the Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2023. Other platform-economy firms have since inserted similar clauses, allowing drivers and couriers to lend their accounts, reject work, and work for rivals.

The expected reforms would look beyond contract wording at how the relationship operates in practice, and create a legal presumption of worker status when a case reaches tribunal.

Why are employment lawyers sceptical?

Caspar Glyn, a barrister and former chair of the Employment Lawyers Association, told the Financial Times on 5 October that tribunals already examine working reality rather than contractual language. A serious assault on bogus self-employment, he argued, would require primary legislation rather than a consultation-driven tweak.

Other employment lawyers point to two further gaps. The government has not booked parliamentary time to draft and debate wholesale changes to the status system, and it has not proposed altering tax status — the lever that makes self-employment classification financially attractive to employers in the first place.

Labour's pre-election platform pledged a single "worker" status for everyone except those genuinely self-employed, a position that would require a tax-side overhaul the consultation appears unlikely to deliver.

What does this mean for individual workers?

For couriers, contractors and other platform workers currently classed as self-employed, the practical outcome of the consultation will hinge on whether HMRC's tax rules shift alongside employment-rights changes. Without that, the 100,000-worker upside translates into a narrower cohort — likely those whose contracts lack substitution language entirely.

The consultation closes before legislation can be drafted this parliamentary session, leaving the sector watching whether Reynolds can convert his conference pledge into a bill with enough teeth to survive contact with existing case law.