Alec introduced a Ten Minute Rule Motion to the House of Commons in May calling for the prohibition of unpaid internships.
Campaign group Intern Aware and a number of other Conservative MPs are backing Alec’s motion.
According to a recent YouGov poll 43% of 18 to 24 year olds believe unpaid internships act or have acted as a major barrier to getting a job. Former MP and Poverty Tsar Alan Milburn’s 2012 report into social mobility found that over 30% of newly hired graduates had previously interned for their employer, rising to 50% in some sectors.
In the Commons, Alec argued that unpaid internships restrict social mobility as they aid young people from wealthy backgrounds who can afford to work for free, but restrict entry to the workplace for the majority of young people in the UK.
Alec drew reference to his own early employment doing manual work in engineering factories and as a kitchen and bathroom fitter as he explained why he thinks unpaid internships should be banned.
Alec said: “Like most young people, at our local comprehensive school both my sister and I were taught that hard work and determination would help us make something of ourselves in the world of work. Our supportive parents made us work part-time jobs around our education, something that taught us the real value of money, something we had to do to run our first cars and something that taught us how to budget; a valuable lesson for later life. Unpaid work was simply not an option for me or my sister and it should no longer be a barrier for ordinary kids like we were, to get into the workplace. In the 21st Century it is time to ban the practice of unpaid labour.”
The Low Pay Commission reported in 2013 that it “received a substantial volume of evidence suggesting a growth in the terms ‘internship’, or volunteer’ to denote unpaid activities that look like work and to which the National Minimum Wage should apply.”
Alec’s motion called for an amendment to existing National Minimum Wage legislation to redefine the term “workers” and offer greater protections to young people entering the workplace. The motion called for a common sense approach to ensure than no work experience should last longer than four weeks without pay; at which point an individual should become an intern and be paid the National Minimum Wage as a minimum.
A number of employers such as Ernst & Young and KPMG already implement similar practises and employer bodies ranging from the Public Relations Consultants Association, the Arts Council and the Royal Institute of British Architects actually expel members that use unpaid interns.
Alec’s Ten Minute Rule Motion passed its first vote in the Commons 181 to 19 – with some Opposition MPs voting against it.