THE senior adviser to Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, accepted a freebie night out from “gig economy” food delivery firm Just Eat — shortly before the firm announced it was sacking 1,700 couriers and ditching sick pay and holiday pay for their staff.

This is just one of the many small but offensive details in the register of payoffs and freebies to parliamentary staff.

Esther Webber, a journalist at the Politico website, went through the parliamentary registers this month, finding “Keir Starmer and his staff accepted tickets to attend concerts, football matches and horse-racing gifted by Big Tech companies and racecourse operators as lobbyists target potential players in the next UK government.”

While “eight members of his staff received gifts ranging from tickets to a Harry Styles concert, the Brits music awards and Doncaster races from Google UK, YouTube, Arena Racing, the Premier League and several music industry lobbying outfits.”

There are bigger signs of Labour embracing corporations — like bankers, consultants and gambling lobbyists paying the actual salaries of shadow ministers’ staff. But the flow of smaller freebies shows just how comfortable Starmer’s Labour are with corporate favours.

The one that jumped out at me was Ashworth’s top adviser accepting a “ticket to the British Kebab Awards in February” “provided by Just Eat.”

The British Kebab Awards are a popular “fun night out” in the British politics calendar, funded by the Centre for Turkey Studies, a think tank run by Labour politician Ibrahim Dogus.

But Just Eat is a nasty “gig economy” food delivery firm. It has been boasting for years that it is breaking with the “gig economy” model of dubious self-employment. 

Just Eat claimed it was moving all its staff to a “worker model” — which for legal rights is one step below “employed” but above self-employment. 

Just Eat claimed: “We feel like we are in a fortunate position as a successful and profitable business that we are able to do so.” Just Eat is a Danish-based multinational with a £4.8 billion turnover. 

But shortly after taking top Labour staff to the kebab awards, Just Eat suddenly felt less generous. 

It cancelled all its moves to take staff onto better employment contracts — it announced it was cancelling  “worker” contracts for its 1,700 UK couriers and sacking 170 British headquarters staff. 

It was returning to the old “gig economy” model of self-employment — exactly the kind of labour abuse the Labour Party should be rejecting. 

I wasn’t surprised. I spoke to Just Eat in 2021 and 2022, when I found many of their couriers had still not been taken on to their promised “worker” contracts and were in fact employed by dodgy subcontractors, some using what looked like a form of tax fraud called the “Mini Umbrella Company” dodge. 

Back then Just Eat said that it was trying to move towards a worker model for all staff, but that it was hard because renting premises as depots for their couriers, with indoor space and toilets, was expensive. 

Every other business thinks having an office or shop or depot is the price of doing business, but for Just Eat, having a premises was a shocking cost. 

Now it has given up on the plan. Its couriers will have to find their own places to shelter from the rain or go to the loo. They can say goodbye to holiday pay and sick pay. Labour would speak out, but their mouths are full of the kebabs the firm bought for them.