Welfare Reform Bill

The basic way to get information from the self-employed is this: they will put in the information in the universal credit system, or an equivalent system, which will potentially match up later with the information that they provide either to the VAT authorities or to HMRC. There is a process of reporting. To get back to the point, there is an opportunity to provide real support for entrepreneurial business, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, so shrewdly said, we must not be an open cheque book for people who are not running genuine businesses. We need to get that right.