National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Margot James

Friday 4th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The hon. Gentleman takes my example a little too far, but one can only imagine such an outcome as being highly likely.

Now, let me introduce Jack. Jack’s father works for a landscape-gardening company and just about makes average earnings, and his wife works part-time as a carer. As a family, they are just about getting by and they think Jack will get on fine because he is a bright boy. But Jack is already disadvantaged by some of the choices he made at GCSE which ruled out the sort of A-levels the Russell Group universities favour. He has no contacts in London and his family cannot afford to support him through an unpaid internship. Unlike Susan I think Jack would probably be one of the 40% of young people my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell indicates would reject an internship if offered on an unpaid basis. Those case studies illustrate to me that my hon. Friend is really on to something in challenging the concept of unpaid internships under the conditions set out in his Bill.

However, we believe that good, worthwhile, genuine internships certainly have a part to play, alongside other routes such as work experience, apprenticeships, work placements and work shadowing, all of which we have heard a great deal about in our debate. I believe we all recognise that young people learning about the workplace, developing skills and getting training can produce networking opportunities in and of themselves. Employers can also benefit from fresh thinking and from finding potentially great new permanent employees to join their team in future.

There are many different types of internship. The Gateways to the Professions Collaborative Forum, for example, represents about 60 professional bodies. We have heard about the excellent programme of paid internships that is run from the Speaker’s quarters in this House. In the attempt to define high-quality apprenticeships as an arrangement whereby individuals work and can gain some compensation, there is also the prospect that they will develop professional skills and an understanding of a profession. Those are all good experiences and we would not want obstacles to their fulfilment to be created unnecessarily from any unintended consequences of legislation.

There are many excellent resources, such as the Government-backed graduate talent pool, which is an initiative designed to help new and recent graduates to gain real work experience across Government. It advertises quality internships with a range of desirable employers in numerous competitive sectors. Most significantly, 100% of the vacancies advertised through the graduate talent pool are for paid positions. A 2011 survey of more than 500 people registered with the pool found that over 60% of respondents were motivated to join in order to improve their long-term prospects and gain general work experience, and it showed that over 80% of interns would recommend the experience and scheme to others.

Another example is the popular RateMyPlacement website, which I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley mention—I think in relation to some experience he offered to a young person from his constituency. Graduates and interns can share their experiences of placements anonymously on the site and often find specific guidance on such things as interviews and general careers advice.

There is an increasing wealth of information out there, for employers as much as anyone else, about what well-managed, high-quality internships look like. However, we all know that not all the internships we are debating today are good quality and properly managed, and I think we all, across the House, aspire to improve our system such that there ends up being just good-quality, preferably paid—and certainly compensated—internships in future.

Let me turn to the point that several hon. Members have made: that workers do have rights. Workers have a contract with their employer under which they perform work to agreement and both parties must get something of value from the arrangements. The contract does not have to be written and the value provided to the person performing the work might initially be the opportunity to gain experience or the promise of future work. Other factors to consider are whether a person has the right to send someone else to do the work and whether the person is better viewed as working for the employer rather than being engaged by an independent contractor.

A genuine worker has a “day one” right to be at least paid the appropriate national minimum wage or the national living wage if he or she is over 25. When a court looks at a person’s employment status, it will always consider the reality of their working arrangements and not just how those are described. Simply labelling someone as an intern is not enough to exempt them from the rights associated with being a worker.



However, there is no universally agreed or accepted definition of the term “intern”, despite many attempts to define it today. I sensed considerable sympathy for the view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North that it was perhaps a glorified Americanism used to describe what is effectively work experience. We must acknowledge that there are bad examples of work experience and internships, but let me make it absolutely clear that the Government believe that all people in the UK are entitled to fair wages for fair work.

[Philip Davies]

If we complicate this too much, is there not a danger that employers trying to avoid having someone classified as a worker would simply get people in to do menial things such as making the tea, rather than doing a proper job? Most people who do work experience really appreciate being able to muck in and do something worth while. It would be a strange state of affairs if employers were deterred from offering meaningful work experience lest they fall foul of the legislation.