Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Unpaid internships benefit those whose parents can afford to support them and detrimentally affect those whose families simply cannot afford to do so. This is a problem we need to solve, but we need the data available to do so. I beg to move.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder who would collect the data. Could we be assured that the data would always be fully acknowledged? I can see companies saying, “Well, I’m not going to fill in that form”. Many is the time one gets questionnaires and just throws them out. I am slightly concerned about the way in which this could be done. I agree with the noble Lord that there is an awful lot of difficulty in this whole area, partially because careers advice is not great in schools. As a result, people are really desperate to know what sort of jobs would be available. If they are offered an unpaid internship I can see them being tempted to take it, but I absolutely agree that it creates yet more haves and have-nots. But how does the noble Lord think that it would actually work?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, that is the important issue. Let us be quite honest about this: a number of MPs, for example, have unpaid interns with parents who can afford to bankroll them. But if a young person is living on a council estate in Newcastle or Liverpool, how on earth would they be able to come to Westminster and have that experience? If we talk about social mobility, opportunities for all, the raison d’être of internships should be about providing those opportunities for every single person. It does not happen, which is very sad indeed.

I am pleased to say that some internships are paid and one applauds the businesses and individuals who pay interns at the minimum or living wage. Many internships are unpaid and there are businesses—advertising, for example—where the whole ethos is to take on unpaid interns who fight their way to the top. That is true of other businesses as well. It is interesting to look at America, where legal action is being taken against those companies that do not pay internships. In many cases, those businesses are putting their hands up and saying, “Right, we are going to pay our interns”. The same should happen in this country. We have work experience, which is about helping not the employer but the person gaining that short work experience. We have volunteering which, as the name says on the tin, is about volunteering because you want to do something good for a particular cause. Maybe for the first few weeks, an internship should be at your expense, but if it is any longer, you should be paid at a living wage.

I know the Government are sympathetic to this. I think right across this House we are sympathetic about it. There are issues to do with taxation and salaries that we need to understand. I realise it is very late in the day and the Minister cannot give any commitments. I guess nothing can change now, unless we push this to a vote, and I perhaps hope we do not. However, perhaps the Minister can meet us to go over in our own minds about how we might take this forward. I have talked to Ministers and I know that there is a degree of wanting to support this move.