Today Seema Malhotra, Labour and Cooperative MP for Feltham and Heston spoke in the House of Commons Budget debate to defend the position of the self employed.

Referring to her own periods of self employment, she emphasised the burdens as well as the rewards of self employment, and its importance in driving forward the wider economy.  She decried the government’s poor record in improving productivity and linked it to the failures over school building and its serial failures over broadband networks.  She summed up the budget as unfair, lacking vision and leaving the country without a clear plan for the future.  The full text of the speech is available on Hansard.