When the Conservatives talk about a ‘jobs miracle’, they are talking about the self-employed. Since 2008 three-quarters of jobs created have been by the 4.6 million people who now work for themselves. Self-employment is at record levels.

And new employment really is self-employment. Most of the companies registered under this government are one-man bands: sole trading and contracting. Individuals taken out of employment networks, rather than new industries or new firms.

No jobs miracle, but demand stretched thinner, and contracts divided between a growing army of bidders.

As a positive choice, self-employment can be a great and liberating thing. There are those for whom self-determination is worth the risk of going it alone.

The danger is that, at the moment, people are not moving into self-employment as the natural next move for them, but under pressure. A choice made not as a response to a strong economy, but to a weak labour market.

They are the army of the new self-employed: jobseekers told support is running out, and that they should be diverting desperately husbanded income to set up life as an independent trader on eBay. Struggling professionals, offered the chance to jack take-home pay by five per cent – at the cost of their workplace rights. Sole traders, earning a good wage as contractors with successful companies, but pushed on to the wrong side of the risk equation, unable to buy homes or access the lending that they need to invest in their businesses, or in themselves. Those who end up in self-employment not as a positive choice, but to avoid unemployment. Those who given the choice, would prefer the lower risk and potentially lower returns of employed status.

It is a choice that in future simply may not be there. Employers get used to working with freelance and contract labour, and they start to like it. The migration of workers to self-employment is unlikely to be reversed as the economy recovers.

So, bearing that in mind, what do self-employed workers need from the next Labour government?

Simple to say, hard to deliver. Self-employed workers need two things: access to the workplace protections that the employed take for granted, and the practical help to make a new mode of employment work in their interests.

Forget the manufactured concern about red tape – by and large, HR and health and safety standards support self-employed workers, not slow them. What self-employed workers need is the accessible state. They need: tribunals and contract protection, the backing that the employed take for granted; access to the dedicated lending to keep operating during the periods of waiting.

They need a tough state: a state that refuses to accept the costs of business on to the individual. Working with contractors, companies save on risk. They save on HR costs, on pensions, wages and all of the collateral costs of business, on office space and on tax. They keep their money free, and they stay open to new opportunities.

That freedom has a cost. A Labour government must ensure it is not a cost paid by the contractor. Rather than a weak labour market becoming a race to the bottom, treatment of contractors should become a matter of pride for companies. As in supply chain management, employers should given new responsibilities for their treatment of people.

We will be a stronger economy when treatment of contractors becomes part of company reporting.

The keyword, as it so often is for a Labour government, is fairness.

The self-employed must be supported, helped to receive the treatment to which they are entitled. We must restore local advisory services, rebuild regional incubators and support the free legal services nested within them, restore the services which offered advice on the financial products which can radically change the lives of the self-employed – whether that takes the form of accessible mortgage products, or lending to invest.

And we must offer fair access to local markets. My local council excludes small businesses for bidding on council projects. So, probably, does yours.

Announcements are restricted to tender services that are expensive and exclusive.

There is, by design, no preference given to local bidders but there is also no mechanism to help them. There are contracts where local knowledge can easily overmatch underbidding – but contractors need to know about projects before they can bid on them. If we are asking people to operate in competitive markets, then lets make them genuinely competitive. Where we have influence, let’s make this as much about the one-man band as the Big Four.

After all, what labour economists are calling the historic march to self-employment is not going to end any time soon. The least a Labour government can do is to make sure that people do not get hurt on the way.

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Kate Godfrey is parliamentary candidate for Stafford. She has set up businesses in three legislative regimes and now advises other women on going it alone. She is also a non-executive director with funding organisations routing investment to SMEs. She tweets @KateVotesLabour

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Photo: Dominic Campbell