Four reasons why none of us should be taken in by 'Scrap IR35' rhetoric, almost regardless of which political quarter utters it.
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."
Lowe is 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 what Moore News has reported to be 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 many in November 2025 with Richard Tice MP's pledge to abandon IR35 for "one-person companies."
It was a pledge later clarified 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 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 vowing to abolish IR35 is nonsensical.
Reason 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):
"You haven't explained what you'll replace it with…IR35 was introduced for very valid reasons, the principal one being to tackle tax avoidance."
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?
To read the full Moore News article, which is based on the exclusive comments of recruitment lawyer Adrian Marlowe (who Moore News commissioned), please visit ContractorUK, where this Viewpoint piece was first published.