Not sure about the legality of this but graduates doing unpaid internships is pretty common. Especially in the media. If interns do deserve minimum wage, this would be a pretty big deal and good news for people wanting to break into careers that usually expect a lot of time having worked for free.

I think he is just following Fair Pay Network policy: http://order-order.com/2008/01/08/slave-for-fair-pay-network/

As an employer until recently, I understood from quite some time ago that anyone doing work that benefits the organisation that commissions it and is not recognised as training must, as long as the person is not officially registered as self employed or on some form of contract by way of employment by another organisation, be paid at least the minimum wage.
I came across this intern idea nearly 20 years ago and was disgusted that the organisation concerned (which I’m not prepared to name) was getting substantive benefit from the activity of the person concerned without paying for it (and in that case the slave was a person with a PhD and the possible prize was to later be granted either employment or a contract in a self-employed status). Of course an intern working for an MP is learning a lot, but I suspect is also doing routine work that ought to be remunerated by way of a wage.

Right, let’s be clear about this matter. And before getting clear, let’s also note that having worked for an MP (who paid me, from the start) for 8 months (6 months in Parliament), I know what I’m talking about.

MP’s interns work.

They are not doing “work experience” or “shadowing”. They are working.

They are expected to turn up in the morning and stay until the evening. They have assigned tasks and responsibilities. Other members of staff rely upon them. If the intern does not show or does not perform, the office suffers. This meets the definition of “work” provided for under NMW guidelines.

Interns are estimated to contribute 18,000 hours of work to Parliament alone every year. That does not include interns working in constituency offices.

MPs are given an allowance for staff payments of over £100,000 a year.

Interns are working, they have a legal (and moral) right to be paid, and the funds are there to pay them.

If MPs want somebody to come in and work, they should pay them.

Furthermore, by not paying interns, MPs are worsening the social immobility of this country by ensuring that some of the most valuable career-enhancing work it is possible to undertake is reserved not for the most able, or the most hardworking, but for those who are already financially well-off enough to live and work for free in the most expensive city in the country.

This is wrong. It needs to change.

MPs can set an example. If they stop exploiting unpaid interns, and legislate against the practice, then think tanks, law firms, the media, the fashion industry, the design industry, public policy and the masses of other professions now expecting a mandatory period of unremunerated labour will have to cease too.

And we’ll all be better off, as talent rises to the top and society is made that little bit fairer.

That should have been 18,000 hours a week, not a year.

Lots of MPs have interns. Lots of those MPs have the Labour whip. I suspect many former, and possibly current, interns to Labour MPs contribute to this site. Funny it’s never been mentioned before.

Scuse my ignorance then but what is the difference between an intern and an employee?

Do interns in commerce and industry get paid so is it just in the public sector that they don’t?

I can think of a Campaign Group (as was) MP who, when confronted by a member of her staff who demanded she pay TGWU rates, said she would be perfectly happy to hire (American) interns to work for her for nothing.

The Guidance for MPs states clearly that:

Interns who are obliged to do work under the control of the Member or
Member’s representative are likely to be workers under the minimum wage
legislation and so should be paid the minimum wage. This is because once an
individual comes under an obligation to perform activities in accordance with the
employer’s instructions and becomes subject to a sufficient degree of obligation to
undertake tasks just like a worker or employee, or the individual fulfils an actual job,
then NMW should be paid.

It then goes on to note that the legal definition of voluntary workers does not apply to interns, so it would appear that Hammond, and other MPs, according to his comments, may be acting unlawfully.

Not much to say on this, except that the majority of commenters are right, and interns ought to be paid as workers, but I think it’s a bit unfair to single out a single MP on this, even if they are a Tory. Sadly this is unlikely to become a big scandal even though imo it’s as big an issue as the misallocation of expenses.

Currently, W4MP lists the following MPs as advertising unpaid intern positions…

Jo Swinson (LD)
Diane Abbott (Lab)
Richard Younger-Ross (LD)
Andrew Dismore (Lab)
Mike Penning (Con)
Roger Williams (LD)
Mike Harper (Con)
Phyllis Starkey (Lab)
Danny Alexander (LD) – actually wants a full-time intern!
Norman Baker (LD) – offering travel expenses for London only!

Stuart Jackson (Con) is the only MP who’s currently offering NMW for an intern position.

“Interns are working, they have a legal (and moral) right to be paid, and the funds are there to pay them.”

And what if I am willing to work for free to gain experience? Who are you to tell me I can’t?

“And what if I am willing to work for free to gain experience? Who are you to tell me I can’t?”

Yes, when I wrote my comment, I was aware of that category. At local govt level, in the ward where I live there is a young man doing just that at a time when one Cllr is away for 3 weeks and the other, well into his 70s, has been ill – the young man is hoping to stand for the Council when the old boy retires next year. What MPs ought to have available to them is a model volunteer agreement that makes clear the arrangement under which such volunteers work. It ought to include, for example, the obligation on the MP to provide insurance cover. Its presumably quite similar to the relationship between charities and their volunteers.

Richard,

It’s not so much about telling you the employee that you can’t.

It’s about telling the employer that just because some people are willing and able to work for free, that doesn’t make it acceptable.

The reason for this is partly because of the incredibly unlevel playing field that results given the existing wealth disparities between candidates.

Tories are in favour of equality of opportunity right?

So tell me how there is equality of opportunity in the present intern system, given that ability to do an internship at the very start of a person’s career is determined by their parent’s wealth.

“Do interns in commerce and industry get paid so is it just in the public sector that they don’t?”

Traditionally this was pretty much the case, with investment banks, management consultants etc paying internships and other private-sector areas not expecting them.

Now, post-recession big chunks of the private sector are seeing internships as cost-effective labour. Even before that however, many private sector areas had adopted the practice; journalism and media is an outstanding example, but I know people who tried to get into furniture design and were expected to do 6 months unremunerated work.

“but I think it’s a bit unfair to single out a single MP on this, even if they are a Tory.”

Oh, this is and should be a cross-party issue.

However, Phillip Hammond is set to be Chief Sec to the Treasury. Given that Osborne has claimed he only dedicates “40%” of his time to economics, that arguably makes Hammond the de facto Chancellor in waiting.

So he’ll be responsible for sorting out unemployment…and so his attitude to graduate employees has a special significance.

Skating over the slight (!) Tory-bashing reflex, Unity has it right.

Though I can’t see why people willing to volunteer should be forced to take pay “because of parental wealth”. If you do that, you’re going to have to look at people with pensions or early retirees who volunteer while filling positions of people who cannot afford to do that.

One other worthy of note: there are also charities (Oxfam – campaigners for fair pay for low paid workers) and politics.co.uk advertising for unpaid interns.

Politics.co.uk is an eye opener as it is admin-ing the website, and that site makes a lot of money. Keep your eye open and one of their “opinion former” microsites sometimes appears in charity accounts.

“One other worthy of note: there are also charities (Oxfam – campaigners for fair pay for low paid workers) and politics.co.uk advertising for unpaid interns.”

They are exempt from NMW guide-lines because they are charities. They legally don’t have to pay.

“Though I can’t see why people willing to volunteer should be forced to take pay “because of parental wealth”.”

Call it the necessary side-effect of ensuring that those who can’t afford to do unpaid internships get a fair shot.

Matt>“Though I can’t see why people willing to volunteer should be forced to take pay “because of parental wealth”.”

Paul>Call it the necessary side-effect of ensuring that those who can’t afford to do unpaid internships get a fair shot.

I don’t think that justifies it, unless perhaps you are restricting the setup to Parliament – and recognising that MPs have funds.

But that would – surely – prevent voluntary help at the constituency office?

I need convincing that it is practical.

MPs have c.£110,000 per anum for staff.

Let’s legislate them an extra £15,000 a year, specially to pay for interns on the implausible assumption that the £110,000 figure isn’t enough (I say implausible, because my boss manages to pay all of his staff, and the only unpaid interns are the summer work experience kids who are still enrolled at Uni and therefore are exempt under NMW laws).

That should cover it. It will make Britain a fairer place because everyone will be able to do career-boosting work, not just the rich.

And do note that your position is rather an odd one: it would be wrong to force wages upon those who could and would work for free? Who, exactly, thinks it’s wrong? I bet the interns themselves wouldn’t mind. No matter how much money mummy and daddy have, who exactly objects to getting paid?

>And do note that your position is rather an odd one: it would be wrong to force wages upon those who could and would work for free? Who, exactly, thinks it’s wrong? I bet the interns themselves wouldn’t mind. No matter how much money mummy and daddy have, who exactly objects to getting paid?

I was looking for consistency. If you draw the boundary around Parliament with a specific “intern” budget then I think that would probably do it, though I’d see no reason necessarily to prevent further volunteers.

“Tories are in favour of equality of opportunity right?”

The whole concept is laughable actually. The only way to enforce equality of opportunity would be to ban parents from doing anything that might give their children an advantage in life. Might as well bring them up in state-run nurseries.

“The whole concept is laughable actually. The only way to enforce equality of opportunity would be to ban parents from doing anything that might give their children an advantage in life. Might as well bring them up in state-run nurseries.”

This is a common and fallacious reasoning process. It is to assume that because we cannot solve a problem completely, we should do nothing to mitigate it whatsoever, even though such mitigating steps are within our power.

It is the intellectual equivalent of saying that because the fact of dusk makes it impossible to draw a sharp and definite dividing line between night and day, that therefore there is no difference between night and day. Which is patently absurd.

In concrete terms: the concept of equality of opportunity in an absolute sense of having completely equal starting points is certainly practicably unattainable (or “laughable” as you term it).

But does it follow that we should take *no* steps towards promoting equality of opportunity, at all, even when realising that absolute equality of opportunity is an impossibility? Of course not. We can take measures which effectively say “OK, the playing field will never be completely even…but hell, it’s so uneven right now that we can certainly make it a lot *better*, if never perfect”.

Ending the state of affairs whereby internships are de facto only open to the wealthy will do that. Nobody is saying either that it will bring about absolute equality of opportunity, or that such a goal is realistic or even desirable. What they are saying is that a step towards increased equality of opportunity is a good thing, because it will (for a host of reasons) make the world a better place. Reasoning from this basic and coherent thought to – as you do – sounding off some polemic about state-run nurseries taking away parent’s right to raise their children is just very, very silly.

If you dismis this argument by saying “it’s irrelevant, because you will never achieve the ideal” (i.e. repeat the same manoeuvre again), well you may as well kill yourself. And that’s not an ad hom jibe, by the way, it’s a potential application of your own logic. To wit:

“My life will never be perfect (by definition), therefore I ought do nothing to make it better, therefore I may as well just stop living right now. Because it’s all the same”. And again, that is patently absurd.

So don’t kill yourself. But do note that your argument is not only poor, but almost certainly one you yourself don’t actually endorse.

“My life will never be perfect (by definition), therefore I ought do nothing to make it better, therefore I may as well just stop living right now. Because it’s all the same”. And again, that is patently absurd.”

That would make sense if I was aiming for a perfect life. However, being aware that perfection is impossible I simply aim for a better life. I suppose really it’s a matter of semantics, the reason I reacted as I did is because of the number of times I’ve heard Tories say “equality of outcome is impossible so we should aim for equality of opportunity instead” (which is also impossible). Back on topic my gut reaction to the idea of forcing MPs to pay interns, even if they’re prepared to work for free, simply struck me as as rather draconian but admittedly I rate liberty higher than equality.

“That would make sense if I was aiming for a perfect life. However, being aware that perfection is impossible I simply aim for a better life. I suppose really it’s a matter of semantics, the reason I reacted as I did is because of the number of times I’ve heard Tories say “equality of outcome is impossible so we should aim for equality of opportunity instead” (which is also impossible).”

Shorter: “What you said, but presented as though I’m saying something different”

“Back on topic my gut reaction to the idea of forcing MPs to pay interns, even if they’re prepared to work for free, simply struck me as as rather draconian but admittedly I rate liberty higher than equality.”

If you think giving everyone a fair shot is “draconian” then I suppose so.

But are you so sure you can parse this in term of “liberty”? Because the sword of reason cuts both ways. You are presumably meaning “the liberty of those who want to work for free”. But what about the liberty of those who cannot work for free and are therefore excluded? By not making internships paid, they are not free to take internships.

It’s all very good saying you prioritise liberty over equality…but there seems a strong case for saying that making all internships paid promotes liberty as well as equality. It just depends *whose* liberty you’re focusing on.

For more on this, I recommend the now sadly deceased G.A. Cohen’s “Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality”, specifically his attack on Nozick’s conception of freedom.

@26: If on a voluntary (and therefore unpaid) arrangement, you have the freedom to say ‘No’ to a request to do something; if paid a wage, you have to work as instructed (with all the usual getouts about the work and the wage being legal, etc).

@27: yes, i know.

I think I actually something pretty similar above.

What’s your point?

My partner has been working for the last 2 years as an unpaid intern in the fashion industy. If he were to turn around and ask for payment then there would be 10 people lined up to replace him for free. The logic is that he is making connections and gaining experience in return for his work (although i’m not sure how much those things cost his employer!). The side-effect of this is that he is the only person in his work environment not on some kind of trust fund – and in fact can only continue to work due to a) my financial support and b) our breadline lifestyle. Now the fashion industry isn’t famous for its humanitarianism or working-class presence but the fact that our politicians are committing the same crimes against society is very worrying indeed.

Why have a minimum wage if it’s voluntary?