Fury as middle class told: Don’t pay builders in cash

… and Corbyn says practice is obviously wrong

MIDDLE-CLASS families should not pay builders, cleaners or babysitters in cash, a Government review of employment said yesterday.

The report, by Tony Blair’s former policy chief Matthew Taylor, suggested those paying cash-in-hand to get a discount were not ‘good citizens’.

In a move likely to anger honest taxpaying workers, it called on ministers to move towards a ‘cashless’ society to encourage ‘the right choices’.

Last night Jeremy Corbyn described cash-in-hand payments as ‘obviously wrong’, and called for them to be ‘phased out’.

But Theresa May, who commissioned the report, distanced herself from it, with No 10 saying paying in cash was ‘legitimate’.

Mr Taylor said moving to a cashless society could help claw back more than £6billion a year in taxes lost to the black economy. He said it was ‘unfair’ to use tradesmen who kept their prices low by using cash to avoid paying tax.

He said migrants should be barred from operating on a cashin-hand basis, urging ministers to make it a condition of new work permits for migrants to show they could take electronic payments.

Mr Corbyn said: ‘Cash-in-hand payments are often made to avoid tax, it’s quite clear. Many businesses benefit from it, individuals benefit from it.

‘Obviously it is wrong. If there is a tax to be paid – VAT or whatever – then it should be paid, and cashin-hand obviously avoids that. I want to see it phased out.’

But Mrs May signalled she will reject this when the Government responds to the report later this year. A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘We need to make sure we are at the forefront of all the technology and innovation around making it easier to pay for things. But at the same time many people prefer to pay cash-in-hand and that is a legitimate way of paying for goods and services.’

The report stopped short of calling for a ban on cash payments, but urged ministers to take measures to help phase it out.

Mr Taylor acknowledged it may be seen as ‘intrusive’ to expect people to produce records of all transactions, but said it would ‘provide a clearer audit trail’.

‘This can help to change the behaviour of those individuals who are non-compliant as a result of inertia rather than through conscious choice,’ the report added. ‘It can also support consumers in making the right choices.’

The report said many found it ‘hard to be sure’ a gardener or window cleaner was paying tax, so ‘many people inadvertently participate in the informal economy’.

But Steve McNamara of the Licensed Taxi Association said ministers should focus on corporate giants ‘ripping off the country’ by paying ‘little or no tax’.

Yesterday’s report on ‘modern working practices’ was commissioned in response to the growth of the so-called ‘gig economy’.

Some 1.1million work on a casual basis for firms such as Deliveroo. Mr Taylor said zero-hours contracts ‘should be a means to twoway flexibility, not a lazy way for those with market power to dump risk on those who lack that power’. Unite union leader Len McCluskey said: ‘Without fully resourced enforcement then all we have from Mr Taylor and the Government is a dog that is all bark and no bite.’

BBC and Sky News presented members of the hard-Left Independent Workers Union of Great Britain as ordinary workers in coverage of the review yesterday.

Ben Geraghty appeared on Sky with the caption ‘Deliveroo driver’. He was described as an IWGB organiser when he wrote for the Financial Times in 2016.

The BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme spoke to Megan Brown, a ‘courier for a food delivery company’. She was described as chairman of the courier branch of the IWGB by Buzzfeed in May.

TODAY the Commons debates one of the nastiest developments in politics – the growing use by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters of vicious abuse, physical threats and fake news smears to intimidate and undermine Tories and moderate Labour politicians.

Over the past fortnight, examples highlighted by the Mail include a thug urinating on Tory MP Sheryll Murray’s office door and others carving swastikas into her election posters, while Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger has been bombarded with anti-Semitic abuse and threats of rape and murder.

Now more victims are coming forward every day – among them Tory MP Maria Caulfield, who tells how her car tyres were slashed and 90 per cent of her election posters were ripped down or defaced.

Or take Tory MP Andrew Percy, a convert to Judaism, who reports that a female Corbyn supporter screamed ‘Zionist scum’ at him, saying after she touched him: ‘I’ll need a wash now.’

Indeed, it is a profoundly disturbing reflection on our times that after compiling a dossier of similar incidents, an all-party inquiry into electoral conduct has found it necessary to recommend parties do more to prepare candidates for the hostility and threats to their safety they now face.

Yet the millions who rely on the BBC for their news have been told almost nothing of the Corbynites’ vile tactics.

Meanwhile, the Labour leader himself – that preacher of a ‘kinder, gentler politics’ – has said precious little to distance himself from his hate mob, while doing even less to discipline them.

Now contrast his failure to act with the Tories’ instant suspension of MP Anne Marie Morris after she used the offensive phrase ‘ n***** in the woodpile’ during a discussion of Brexit.

This paper makes no defence of Miss Morris. For though the expression was once common to describe a hidden snag, and she used it without a hint of racist intent, it is now rightly taboo. She should have known better – and after her suspension, she does.

Wouldn’t politics be far cleaner if the Labour leader showed the same resolve to crack down on the hate mob’s often criminal attacks on his opponents – and the BBC devoted more zeal to reporting them?