Loose Women stars Janet Street-Porter and Jane Moore have reportedly “left” the ITV show in a row over contracts. It has been reported that Janet and Jane decided to quit after being told to sign contracts saying they were permanent ITV employees, rather than freelance journalists.
Jane has not been seen on the show since December 29, 2023, but Janet has appeared up until recently.
The row is said to be over ITV’s new PAYE-only contracts policy in response to HMRC’s off-payroll working rules. It comes after after tax authorities said TV presenters should not be able to use a “corporate veil” to claim not to be staff.
A source told MailOnline: “Jane and Janet are furious. They have done such a lot for that show and they love it. But… they do different work across different companies and, as journalists, value their independent status.
“Things have got pretty tense. If it carries on, there might be a big change to the line-up.”
The publication’s sources say the contracts do not offer holiday, sick pay, or pension and forbid some work opportunities.
In response to the report, a spokesperson for ITV told Express.co.uk: “We don’t comment on individual cases but ITV ensures that it complies with and follows all HMRC guidance and legislation.”
We have also contacted Janet and Jane’s representatives for comment.
Carol McGiffin left Loose Women in May 2023 after 23 years as a panellist. She told her social media followers at the time that she had not been on the show for two months due to “contract negotiations”. She also said she was “forced to step away” from her role because it was “stressing her out”.
Fellow Loose Women star Kaye Adams has won three court battles against HMRC since they claimed she owed £125,000 in unpaid tax.
Her decade-long battle, which began when she was first investigating her in 2014, left her feeling like a “punch bag”.
She said on Woman’s Hour last week: “If you go through three tribunals and you win every one, and they have never won in my case, and yet still they decline to say, ‘OK, right we take the word of the tribunals here, we’re listening to what they’re saying’.
“That’s just leaving me in this limbo and after 10 years of fighting this I waited for this moment that they were going to say, ‘We’re going to leave you alone,’ I expected to feel elated and I feel like a punching bag.”
Eamonn Holmes says he had to sell his Belfast home after losing two appeals against HMRC which cost him “hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees”.
The presenter, 64, says tax officials ruled he was a staff member when working for ITV – rather than a freelancer – and he needed to pay 10 years of backdated National Insurance and tax payments, leaving him with a bill reported to be around £250,000.
The GB News presenter, who previously presented This Morning with his wife Ruth Langsford, said the tax row was “the most stressful experience outside of losing my father”.
He also believed the ordeal sparked a severe bout of shingles in 2018, which could have left him blind.