Mr. John McKeon:

First, we have to define a test case, so let me do that, if I may. A suggestion has been made the Department took a test case with regard to a particular sector and, on the basis of that test case, then determined that everybody in a sector fell within a particular category. As I said, we did not do that. What the Department did - this is going back to the 1990s, long before my time - was to have a look at a number of cases to try to determine what criteria could be used, applying the common law handed down by the courts, to classify somebody as employed or self-employed. It came up with five tests, which are to do with mutuality of obligation, integration, ability to control, enterprise tests and so on, and those tests are now applied to every case individually. If the Deputy wants to say we took a test case to establish the criteria, then that is what we did, but those criteria are applied individually to each worker.

The chief appeals officer can probably comment on this. On rare occasions, particularly in the appeals space, if all the employees and an employer agree to have a group of workers who are in a similar position with the same employer, evaluated based on taking a sample, that may happen, but it is very rare. All the individual workers have to agree, the employer has to agree and each worker gets a separate, independent determination, which he or she can then appeal. That is not the same as people saying one can do a test case and what comes out of that case determines all subsequent cases. That is not what happens.