It takes courage and resilience to work for yourself, and those are commodities required in bucketloads right now.

The livelihoods of armies of florists, taxi drivers, musicians, hairdressers, plumbers, physical trainers and many more have evaporated within a matter of days. And while large employers spent this past week rapidly rolling out Government-backed furlough programmes that will guarantee staff receive 80% of their wages in the difficult months to come, the UK’s five million self-employed were left wondering how to make the next mortgage payment while also buying food.

So no surprise whatsoever when Chancellor Rishi Sunak stepped up late on Thursday afternoon to unveil his

well-trailed support package for the self-employed, which has attempted to mirror the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme announced on March 20.

In the wake of confirming his plan to subsidise the wages of employed workers, Sunak came under huge pressure to introduce something equivalent for the self-employed. On the surface, the two schemes do appear quite similar.

To recap: employees who are placed on furlough will have 80% of their wages paid by the Government, up to a maximum of £2,500. The Chancellor has now confirmed that those who are majority self-employed will receive an amount equivalent to 80% of their income, based on their average monthly profits, again up to a maximum of £2,500.

But that’s where the similarities end. Looking at the substantial points of difference, it’s hard not to conclude that this was a hastily-arranged afterthought in the war against the economic fallout of Covid-19.

The Government has said that 95% of people who are majority self-employed will benefit from the scheme. Others claim as many as two million will fall through what are not so much holes as gaping rifts in this emergency safety net.

As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between, but in this instance is probably closer to the upper estimates.

Regardless of the actual numbers who eventually receive assistance, it’s doubtful that many self-employed people heaved a sigh of relief when they heard the news. There is a great deal of confusion about who will qualify, and what hoops they will have to jump through to do so. And compared to the speedy rollout of furlough programmes, the delivery of aid to the self-employed is coming on a geologic timescale.

It will likely be June before these grants start getting paid as a taxable lump sum covering March, April and May. The Chancellor said on Thursday that although he would like to get them through sooner, he didn’t want to make any promises that might not be delivered.

That means at least two more months of bills to cover – a scary prospect when there’s no sign of any income on the horizon. There is, of course, the option of applying for Universal Credit in the meantime, but that amounts to just over £90 a week, with a five-week wait until the first payment.

Part of the delay in rolling out assistance to the self-employed, as Sunak rightly pointed out, is the complexity involved in setting up a system that can effectively deal with the wide variety of circumstances under which people work for themselves.

About one million people who were self-employed last year are not any longer, and another million who weren’t self-employed a year ago now are. In addition, the wages of those who work for themselves are often lumpy and intermittent, making it difficult to define their “regular” pay packet.

But there is another factor to consider, which is the four-week extension that has been granted to those who missed the January 31 deadline for filing their tax return for the past year.

This is to ensure that everyone possible gets the chance to qualify for assistance, but as the Chancellor conceded on Thursday, it does have “a knock-on impact on when the scheme can be up and running”.

“I think that was a trade-off that was worth making,” Sunak said.

Even in these days of unprecedented Tory Government generosity, this seems rather lavish. The filing deadline was more than seven weeks past at the time of the Chancellor’s announcement, and as HMRC habitually makes clear, there is no acceptable excuse for missing it.

Is it right that, in order to accommodate those well overdue to report their tax affairs, the majority who adhere to the rules now face a longer delay than necessary in receiving vital assistance? Or was this a way of buying additional time for the Government to get its collective head around this complicated new initiative? Answers on a postcard, please.

There is further understandable concern for the unspecified many who will not be eligible for the Coronavirus Self-employment Income Support Scheme. They include anyone turning an annual profit of £50,000 or more, those who invest their profits in their business, and those who have set up recently – remember that one million figure above? – and therefore haven’t filed a tax return for the 2018/19 financial year.

The self-employment sector of our workforce has been growing apace since the financial crisis of just over a decade ago, and now contributes approximately £300 billion to the UK economy. It has transformed our economic statistics and been a major generator of jobs growth, making it one of the most significant labour market trends since the start of the millennium.

All the evidence suggests that this is a permanent, structural shift, as opposed to a cyclical transformation. Yet as has become clear with the problems encountered by the self-employed support scheme, all of our relevant public policy systems – employment legislation, tax and benefit, education and training – are still aligned to a time when self-employment was consigned to the economic margins.

With the number of those working for themselves approaching the size of the public-sector payroll, the need for a systematic overhaul is now long overdue, but as with many things this will have to wait until the current health crisis is overcome.

The self-employed are arguably the hardest-working segment of our society. When the current turmoil has abated, they deserve a new deal.