By Emma Smailes, of the Federation of Small Businesses

THOSE of you with certain literary tastes will know Ford Prefect, the fictional character in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Ford is an alien journalist aged 200 years, who despite his love of alcohol and dark humour, doesn’t really get human behaviour. In particular, he can't understand why humans have a habit of "continually stating and repeating the very, very obvious".

Well here’s stating the obvious for you. You've probably noticed that the self-employed have received a significant amount of media attention in the last few years. Why? Because self-employment is booming. According to the latest estimates published last month, there are now 4.64 million self-employed people working in the UK. The self-employed now account for 15 per cent of the workforce – the highest on record - up from 12 per cent in 2000 and eight per cent in 1980.

Over the years, Governments of all hues have obsessed over ‘high-growth’ businesses, yet it is the millions of sole traders, one-person businesses, freelancers and contractors that are the cogs of the economy. This is bread and butter for FSB (Federation of Small Businesses). We exist to support these businesses and have done since our inception.

However, what often gets missed in debates around business growth, access to finance, export performance and the like is the basic fact that there are real-life people behind these businesses. What is more, many of the self-employed aren’t really running traditional bricks and mortar businesses either - instead they are driving Uber taxis or selling their wares on Etsy and eBay. They are parents balancing part-time freelance work with childcare and older people looking to do something interesting and different in their retirement.

And when it comes to the self-employed, separating what is 'business' and what is 'personal' just doesn’t happen. Yet many, policy makers and pundits alike, have little to say about the personal challenges of self-employment - the challenges of not having the security of a regular income, not getting paid if you're sick, not being able to save towards a pension. These are real challenges for many self-employed people, including FSB members, challenges that government needs to recognise and act on.

Recently we issued a landmark report, “Going it Alone, Moving on Up: Supporting Self Employment in the UK”. In it we set out a number of recommendations for Government, from boosting maternity pay for self-employed mothers, calling on the insurance industry to provide affordable income protection insurance products for the self-employed, developing more flexible pensions saving schemes and reforming Universal Credit rules. Our aim is to influence the policy debate and get a far better deal for the self-employed - one which recognises their crucial contribution to the economy.

Whilst landmark in many ways, for us it also a homecoming, over 40 years on, and we're going back to our roots and coming up with new ideas to support the self-employed.

But our report is only the start. We can and must do more to reach out to and support the 4.3 million self-employed workers out there. As Martin McTague, our new National Policy Chairman and North Yorkshire Member, says in the foreword to our report, “championing the self-employed is in our DNA”. While Ford Prefect would no doubt disapprove of him stating the obvious, we should continue to state and restate this in all that we do. The report can be found at www.fsb.org.uk