CONGRATULATIONS go to Conservative Chancellor Philip Hammond for doing a screeching U-turn on increases in National Insurance contributions pencilled in for the self-employed.

Or is it more like an inept Chancellor of the Exchequer who failed to read his own Tory manifesto, which stated no increases in income tax and National Insurance contributions?

No matter how you view this Government U-turn, one must be relieved that the self-employed won’t be hit by this, as they struggle to set up their own businesses.

The self-employed and small businesses are the backbone of the British economy and will have a weight lifted off their shoulders, especially if you were a redundant Teesside SSI steelworker looking to go solo in the self-employed field.

George Robert Dunning, Ormesby