Why Rupert Lowe MP’s Restore Britain has it wrong on IR35

The official launch of Restore Britain on Friday, February 13th 2026, by Rupert Lowe MP adds to the number of political parties and politicians actively vowing to scrap IR35.

Mr Lowe took to LinkedIn here with his pledge, saying, "Restore Britain would scrap IR35 on day one."

He's not alone, of course, writes Adrian Marlowe, managing director of Lawspeed and chair of the Association of Recruitment Consultancies.

What political parties want to scrap IR35?

Spearheaded by Andrew Griffith MP, the Tories had a "positive" meeting in the last quarter of 2025 about doing away with the Intermediaries Legislation.

And Reform UK, Mr Lowe's former party, delighted contractors directly in November 2025 with Richard Tice MP's pledge to ContractorUK to abandon IR35 for "one-person companies."

It was a pledge later clarified to ContractorUK by a Reform spokesperson to mean that both IR35 and IR35 reform (the Off-Payroll Working rules) would be axed under a Nigel Farage-led Reform government.

Why 'Scrap IR35' is unrealistic

But unfortunately, all pledges to remove IR35 or the Off-Payroll Working (OPW) rules should be treated with a degree of scepticism, not just where it's a politician's promise, but because it doesn't live in the real world.

Let me give you four reasons why this is the case.

1. There's no detail from any 'Scrap IR35' camp about a replacement

Firstly, and problematically, there is no commitment by Messrs Lowe, Tice and Griffith to put anything in IR35's place.

In the words of the first person online to respond to Restore Britain's day-one pledge to scrap IR35, posted by Mr Lowe (much as he posted a year ago here on 'X,' formerly Twitter):

While any promise to scrap these unwieldy rules, dubbed by thinktank Onward as "the greatest barrier to entrepreneurship", could probably be kept by any political party that jumps on this bandwagon, who is to say that such a party won't simply replace IR35/OPW with another set of tax rules that could be even more onerous?!

2. Disguised employment needs to be managed

Second, there is undeniable logic to having some HMRC rules that sort the wheat from the chaff in the contractor community.

Some individuals do operate genuine businesses and are willing to take risks in exchange for profit — and then there are individuals who don't and who just use the fact of having a company as a tax avoidance vehicle.

IR35 was designed to address the latter, but in so doing, has adversely, disproportionately, and unfairly affected the former.

In that respect, the targeting of IR35 by Mr Lowe and others is fair. But does it justify wholesale abandonment?

3. A free-for-all would ensue without support for genuine entrepreneurs

There's a third reason why 'replace IR35' makes a lot more sense than 'remove' or 'revoke' it.

Those who argue for scrapping the disguised employment legislation appear to be arguing for anyone and everyone who claims to be a contractor. This muddies the water.

Is anyone really advocating that it's ok to create a company and use it solely to avoid tax?

Are you a contractor just because you have a company?

Let's face it, it's ridiculously easy and cheap to set up a company in the UK, so why doesn't everyone do it just to get the tax reliefs?

And it should be borne in mind, company tax reliefs were designed to promote business and incentivise entrepreneurship — not to facilitate tax avoidance. Therefore, HMRC is not wrong to address the tax avoiders. The IR35 and OPW rules attempt to distinguish one from another, so a framework of some description would work better than no framework if the UK is to avoid a free-for-all, and support genuine entrepreneurship.

4. The Treasury coffers/revenue-hungry ministers wouldn't stand for it

Last but arguably not least as to why 'Scrap IR35' rhetoric doesn't stand up to scrutiny, HMRC estimates that an additional £4.2 billion in tax revenue was generated between October 2019 and March 2023, thanks to the OPW rules.

This figure has been criticised. But however you look at it, there is no doubt that HMRC achieves significant net benefit from the IR35 rules.

Given the current economic climate in the UK, it would be extremely surprising for any UK political party to want to decrease any source of tax income — unless there is something else to replace it.

TL;DR: 'Why Rupert Lowe MP's Restore Britain has it wrong on IR35'

So that's my four reasons why the claim that IR35 will be axed by any political party that takes over 10 Downing Street, seems to be a hollow one, unless there are rules to replace the disguised employment legislation.

And for now (and this is perhaps more concerning to those of us who genuinely want to see progress in this IR35 space), no politician seems to be proposing anything concrete as an alternative to the OPW rules.

As a recruitment law expert on IR35, we're aware of its traps…

My specialist recruitment law firm (Lawspeed) has worked with agencies and contractors on IR35 since its inception in 2000, and we're very aware of the 'nasties' and the traps it poses. Likewise, the Association of Recruitment Consultancies (of which I am chair) also challenged HMRC's IR35 status testing tool, CEST, when it was introduced.

However, while many contractors would welcome the scrapping of IR35, I believe that what is missing is a workable alternative, whether that's from rewriting ITEPA 2003's Chapter 8 ('IR35'), or Chapter 10 ('OPW') which is predicated on the Chapter 8 tests.

Or we may need another mechanism that can correct the anomalies and outdated assessment requirements while not impacting bonafide commercial contractors.

Finally, what about an IR35 alternative?

To get something to replace IR35/OPW would require a specific focus on genuinely self-employed contractors.

My view is that a broad-brush approach for all 'contractors' will not work, given the potential for arguments that scrapping IR35 would be seen as about permitting tax avoidance.

Indeed, successive governments have had clamping down on 'tax avoidance' high on the agenda. Wouldn't scrapping IR35 be seen as a general abandonment of that time-honoured principle?

And that may answer why, sadly, over its 25 years of its existence, nobody seems to have come up with anything acceptable as a replacement for IR35. Until there's something on the table, no one should get excited, and, almost regardless of the political quarter it comes from, no one should be taken in by the 'Scrap IR35' rhetoric.