Hammond and his desperate back of sofa search
Well if they had 'no plans' before you can bet they do now. Since Hammond was told to scrap the NIC changes by the Headmistress, even though he had cleared it with her first. He will be desperate to retireve every last penny he can find.
Somehow I can't see the Sun and Daily Mail having front page headlines to Compensate the Contractors.
One of the reasons people work as contractors is there are no full time jobs on offer for these people. Forget the bullshit peddlers of agile and business change etc I'm talking about the skilled experienced tradesmen and women who actually build systems. They have learned the hard way that what the manual says ain't true and you need to do this to get around that problem, It's a construction industry so teams are formed, do the job and split up, that level of itinerant flexibility costs money.
We are constantly told about the skills gap, the lack of a pipeline to deliver new entrants to engineering etc. and they pull stunts like this.