National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-04
Topic: Labor
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my hon. Friend; that is the danger. Whether I was covered by the Bill might be open to interpretation, but my suspicion is that this would have a chilling effect on employers. Rather than getting in to some argy-bargy over whether someone needs to be paid, employers would prefer not to go into it. They would rather sit it out. There is nothing in it for them—and, to be perfectly honest, there was nothing in it at all for the employers in my case as it was all done for my benefit. That is my worry. It is great that newspapers take people on to let them see the ropes and find out what working for a newspaper is all about. As it turned out, to finish the story, I realised after doing my course at the Sheffield college that journalism was not for me. Perhaps I should have done a bit more work experience before I got to that stage, so that I could have learned that earlier My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell looks at this issue from one end of a telescope, but I look at it from the other end. If people doing unpaid internships get the chance to get a job in their chosen field as a result, it seems to me that not being paid for their work experience is a small price to pay. That, I am sure, is what the people who offer to do these internships think themselves. Some 75% of the workforce in this field could be without this vital experience if unpaid internships were banned, and 75% of the people who undertook an unpaid internship have successfully entered the industry in which they wanted to work. I think we should celebrate that My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell quoted Alan Milburn at length, but I am not sure that that is a particularly persuasive thing to do in order to win me round. Perhaps I was not his target audience. I am sure that we were all supposed to drop our objections the moment the name of Alan Milburn was mentioned, but it did not work for me. However, the report my hon. Friend mentioned, which was conducted by Alan Milburn was, I think, published in 2009—[Interruption.] I have been corrected, it was 2012. It used research conducted in 2004 by the University of Manchester, which found that about 80% of employers had employed former interns. Again, I think that is a cause for celebration today—that these internships are leading to jobs. Intern Aware sent me a briefing at the time of my hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill, saying that 40% of those who thought of applying for an internship had reconsidered because they did not want to work for free. Let us look at that the other way round. It means that 60% did apply for an internship. We have seen how successful these internships can be so we should celebrate them. People are not doing an unpaid internship thinking that there is absolutely nothing in it for them and that they are being exploited by an unscrupulous employer; they are doing it because they can see the future gain that they are likely to get from doing so. If they did not think it was in their best interests, they might as well have got a paid job doing something else It is patently obvious that the number of opportunities will decrease if all these people have to be paid the minimum wage. Why on earth would someone who is running a business take on someone with no experience and spend time helping them, when they could pay the minimum wage to someone who already had some experience and could crack on with the job straight away? If people have to be paid the same, irrespective of who is taken on, who would an employer be likely to take on? It will not be someone who has no experience whatever; it will be someone who can be up and running on day one. We are talking about fewer opportunities for people who want to enter the workplace. Although that is an unintended consequence of the Bill, I have to tell my hon. Friend that it is a completely foreseeable one and we should not fall into that trap It was a known consequence that the introduction of the so-called living wage was going to cost jobs. When the previous Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) announced to a great fanfare the introduction of the national living wage, we knew straight away that it was going to cost jobs—for exactly the same reason as applies here. The Office for Budget Responsibility clearly stated when the living wage was introduced that, by 2020, as a consequence of the living wage, 4 million hours a week would be lost. It said that half of those hours would be lost on account of reduced hours for workers and the other half because of the loss of 60,000 jobs I could not believe my ears when I first heard that, so I checked with the House of Commons Library and the chairman of the OBR, and they could not have made it any clearer that increasing the amount that people had to be paid at the bottom end would cost 60,000 jobs. I do not know whether that is a great cause for celebration, although I know that plenty of people were celebrating at the time, but I do not really see it as such, and I suspect that the 60,000 people who are going to lose their jobs will not be celebrating by any means. In any event, the OBR made it abundantly clear that increasing employers’ costs in this way would mean far fewer opportunities. That is what it said about the national living wage, and it is obvious that, as night follows day, the same would apply to work experience positions if they were subject to the same regime I am absolutely at one with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). It is a shame that he is not present today. He opposed my hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill back in 2014, saying: "Most people who know me might think that I would support the Bill, but the unintended consequence would be to damage some important opportunities for young people in our country. I…agree with the overall purpose of the Bill, but it will not hit the target. I am against exploitation and I am for fairness and social mobility, but I am also in favour of young people getting the experience that they need to enter the workplace. We need a balance."—[Official Report, 13 May 2014; Vol. 580, c. 595-6.] I could not agree more with everything that the hon. Gentleman said. The House divided on the Bill, and I was a Teller alongside the hon. Member for Huddersfield. I opposed it then, and I still oppose it today Another issue that will not, I suspect, be addressed by the Bill is nepotism. My hon. Friend speaks of ordinary kids with modest backgrounds finding it difficult to access top jobs. It seems to me, however, that the problem is not that they are not paid for the jobs, but that, in many cases, they do not get a look in to start with. I think I am right in saying—and I should make clear that I do not decry anyone to whom this applies—that about one in 12 MPs is related to another MP, either current or former. I am not entirely sure that the Bill will make any difference to that—perhaps it should not make any difference—