Home workers are right to take offence at the derision of Asda’s former boss, Lord Rose, after he said what they were doing was “not proper work”. It is.

He has told the BBC’s Panorama that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” and employees’ productivity was suffering.

This is not true; it is an important addition to the UK’s work options that allows people to work who might otherwise not be able to.

Look at This Writer. I started Vox Political while I was a carer for the former Mrs Mike, and that was a full-time job in itself. The problem was that it paid peanuts and I wanted us to have the best life possible.

So I started a blog site, that turned out to be popular enough to support adverts (this was more than 10 years ago, before the social media platforms restricted the profitability of online businesses) and ended up making enough money to quit Carers Allowance – if only for a year or so before the Facebook/Twitter restrictions kicked in.

But the point is made: it was possible to make a decent living, working from home – and this was before Covid-19 made it not only desirable but vital that some people did so.

Now, as a result of Lord Rose’s words, the BBC has been inundated with angry messages from home workers, explaining why they follow this career course and why it works for them. You can find some of those stories here.

They include information from people who live with chronic illness and work from home to manage their condition. That’s a boost to the economy that the Department for Work and Pensions has never managed, no matter how much stick it applied to disabled people. It turns out that all you have to do is offer a juicy enough carrot instead.

One, who has ADHD, said home working was vital to allow her to be a productive part of the workforce; working at an office leads to stress and mental health issues. She said her current working model had tripled her salary.

The BBC’s article also features contributions from experts like

Clare McNeil, director at Timewise, a consultancy specialising in flexible working policies, [who] highlights that the benefits of remote work extend to employers as well, with such policies reducing staff turnover and sickness absence.

It isn’t for everybody – but the person the BBC used as an example of those opposed to home working was someone who was forced into it because her employer closed all its offices. So that was her employer’s choice, not hers.

I would dispute her claim that all the people who love working from home are in relationships, or have children, or live with family. I don’t.

I understand the concern she raises about loneliness, but I counter that by having as active a social life as possible. This actually helps me with my work because it provides perspectives on stories that I might not otherwise discover.

So the overall consensus seems to be that Lord Rose is mistaken. I wonder whether he has been wheeled out in an attempt to return more control of the workplace to major employers.

With people working from home and being successful at it, employers themselves may seem sidelined – or become unnecessary as the people who do the actual work gain more influence in their own professions.

Home working is a successful, growing side of the economy. With a government that is becoming desperate for such growth, it seems clear that attempts to curb it are counter-productive at best and downright harmful at worst.

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