Philip Hammond's tax raid on self-employed ended

Philip Hammond's tax raid on self-employed ended

Philip Hammond (picture in Downing Street in March) mooted the rise in Class 4 NICs in his Budget earlier this year

Ministers finally killed off plans to hike national insurance for the self-employed today.

The £2billion rise in NICs was mooted in Philip Hammond's Budget earlier this year, but sparked a massive backlash.

The Chancellor was forced into an humiliating U-turn amid fury that it broke the Conservative manifesto - but appeared to revive the issue during the election campaign by refusing to rule out changes.

However, Theresa May's effective deputy, Damian Green, said there would be no attempt to bring the proposals back in the wake of the Tories' setback at the polls. 

The confirmation came as First Secretary of State was asked about former RSA chief executive Matthew Ta ylor's review of the so-called 'gig economy', in which many workers are treated as self-employed.

Mr Green suggested the Government would bring forward policies in response to the report, due tomorrow, but stressed that previous plans to increase Class 4 National Insurance Contributions (NICs) of self-employed workers would not be among them.

The First Secretary of State told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Actually that's not in Matthew Taylor's report, he deliberately doesn't make tax recommendations.

'And we won't be revisiting that... the House of Commons has already spoken on that so we won't be revisiting that.

'But absolutely in terms of the general thrust of Matthew Taylor's report, which is that we have done very well because of our flexible labour market to reduce unemployment to historically low levels, 40-year low on unemployment, he wants t o combine that with a better quality of work, particularly for those working in the gig economy.

'And that is a sensible thing to say and we will be taking that up and working on the details of how best to put that into practice.'

The PM's official spokesman confirmed the step later. 'It's been looked at and we're not going back to it,' he said. The measure had been due to raise £2billion for the Exchequer over two years.

Theresa May's effective deputy, Damian Green (pictured in Downing Street last month), said there would be no attempt to bring the NICs proposals back

Mrs May (pictured at No10 today) suffered a major setback in the general election last month

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