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Labour is tabling an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.

The amendment, if it is accepted on Tuesday, would extend employment rights to workers at firms like Uber who operate in the gig economy. The clause, tabled by shadow digital minister Louise Haigh, would change the law so that workers at companies who provide a service to customers through a digital ‘intermediary’ such as Uber are defined as employees of that business.

Louise Haigh Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Today’s tribunal ruling only applies to Uber and the US-based company plans to challenge it anyway. Louise Haigh said: ‘This amendment will, for the first time, enshrine in statute the rights of workers in the digital economy; the right to be designated as employees and their right to sick and holiday pay so that if companies like Uber try to wriggle out of their responsibilities by appealing this extraordinarily welcome decision today, they will have nowhere to go.”