The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is a professional body for HR and aims to improve employment practices. What do you think their "narrative" is? You seem to be suggesting they are downplaying the numbers, but why do you think they would do this, and what evidence do you have that their figures are wrong? Their recommendations are aimed at improving their employment status by, for example, removing the distinction between self-employment and employed status.

I do think there is a difficulty in defining the "gig economy". They have included freelancers in areas such as IT, media etc who probably don't think of themselves in the same category as Deliveroo riders. However when you think about it, it's difficult to see what the difference is, except that "freelancers" are probably better paid per job.

An area which I suspect is under-reported in these figures (which come from official ONS surveys) is people like myself for whom occasional gigging as a musician is a paid hobby rather than a means of earning a living.