In October 2026 the government issued a consultation about widening who is seen as a ‘worker’, but it is not clear that any changes would apply to the Equality Act.
Current position
Britain has a three-tier system for employment status, with people classified as:
- employees – eg only an ’employee’ can claim unfair dismissal (Losing one’s job>Unfair dismissal)
- workers, which includes employees but is wider – entitled to eg the national minimum wage, paid holiday, and to claim under the Equality Act 2010 (EqA), or
- self-employed – in business on their own account, with greater flexibility but mostly without ’employment rights’.
More: Employees, workers and beyond.
Employment status consultation, October 2026
Make Work Pay: employment status reform and protections for the self-employed (pdf, gov.uk) (14 October 2026) is a consultation seeking views particularly on proposed changes to the meaning of ‘worker’.
The most important proposed change is that ‘personal service’ would no longer be necessary for someone to be a ‘worker’, though it would still be an important factor. It would be less easy for employers to avoid someone being a worker just by inserting a broad ‘substitution clause’ enabling the individual to send someone else to perform their work. Another proposal in the consultation is to create a ‘presumption of worker status’, so that in a tribunal case it would be for the employer to show the claimant is not a worker.
Oddly, this consultation says it is not proposing any changes to the scope of protections under the EqA (pp.45-56, and footnote 5 on p.43). This is despite the fact that under the EqA, the courts apply the same tests for ‘personal service’ and substitution clauses as they do for the rest of employment legislation relating to ‘workers’ (eg Employees, workers and beyond>’Worker’: Right of substitution). It would be very surprising if these changes did not extend to the EqA, but we’ll have to see what happens.
On previous plans under the Conservative government…
Good Work Plan, 2018
The (Conservative) government’s Good Work Plan (gov.uk) issued in December 2018 proposed numerous changes to employment law. These included reforming the rules on which workers have different kinds of employment rights, eg under the EqA. This was particularly important given the growth of the gig economy and zero-hours contacts.
For example, under the Plan it might become more difficult for employers to avoid liability under the EqA by giving workers a right to substitute someone else to do the work.
Matthew Taylor review, 2017
The Good Work Plan followed on from the Matthew Taylor review of modern working practices (gov.uk), published in July 2017, which recommended changes to the rules on employment status.
Also in November 2017, two parliamentary select committees published a report and draft Bill aiming to reform the law on gig economy workers: ‘Worker by default’ status proposed in new gig economy Bill (personneltoday.com).
