National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes; as I said at the start, we all want to achieve the same thing, which is to expand the number of opportunities for people, particularly those who do not always get them at the moment. I do not know anyone in the House who would not share that ambition—I certainly do. The Bill would take us in the opposite direction, which is why the suggestions I have made would be better in trying to deal with the position my hon. Friend has set out In conclusion, I wish to talk about a couple of people who have spent time with me. One of my previous researchers, Grainne, initially started working at my office on an "unpaid internship", as it would be described; it would fall within the scope of the Bill without any shadow of a doubt. She had left university and was struggling to get a job. If I had had to pay her, I would not have taken her on, not only because I could not have afforded to, but because I knew nothing about her. I did not know anything about her credentials, but she wanted to come to have a go and I was happy to facilitate that. This is what she said about the value of her internship when she went to speak at a school about her experience of getting a job in politics: "Having tried unsuccessfully for months to get a paid job, the feedback I kept hearing again and again was that ‘you don’t have enough experience’. But how do you get experience if no one will give you a job? So I decided to apply for an unpaid internship with Philip Davies MP—in the hope this would lead to something more… I was made to feel like a fully integrated part of the team and given a wealth of opportunities that I would otherwise not have achieved.... Without my unpaid internship I am convinced I would not have been given such an excellent opportunity." When a job became available in my office, I gave it to her because she had proved herself and done such a good job in that time. She went on to say: "From Parliament I moved to a Comms agency, before working in the Public Affairs team for a large corporate. I then became a Special Adviser and am now back in House working for a FTSE 125 company as their Director of Corporate Affairs." She is about 30 years old. She continued: "I would not have been able to achieve any of this without my unpaid internship." Another intern, George, who completed a five-month unpaid placement in my constituency and is now working for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), said: "Without the internship I very much doubt I would be working where I am today. Being able to have that first hand experience on my CV was invaluable to getting the job I have today, and I have been able to apply the experience gained to other areas in my role now" I employed my current researcher, who has done a marvellous job helping me on the Bill, after she completed a two-week work experience placement while at university. She did that not as part of her university course, but in the holidays, because it was something that she wanted to do. I am not sure whether that would be covered by the Bill, but I suspect that she would have had to be paid. She said that without doing those couple of weeks in the office, she would not have had the opportunity to show herself capable of the job when it arose, and that is absolutely true I want to see more opportunities for work experience and internships, and the Bill will inevitably lead to fewer such opportunities. I admire my hon. Friend’s passion on social mobility, but I hope that he will reflect on the ideas that I have set out today. In future, perhaps a Bill that covered some of the points made today will go some way to achieving the ambition that we both share.