Unpaid Internships

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank my noble friend for his question and of course for the enormous amount of work he is doing in this area. There has been a step change in the amount of resources that HMRC has to tackle this problem. Funding has doubled from £13 million to £25.3 million in 2017-18. In two years, we have doubled the funding. The Government are taking this issue very seriously and we are recruiting extra compliance officers so that we can proactively identify those exploitative businesses that go on to exploit interns.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, if there has been this step change, why did the recent IPPR report show a dramatic increase in the number of unpaid internships? I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, that it is not fair to get a leg up if others cannot afford one. As a trustee of City Year UK, an excellent charity which works with social action, I am a strong supporter of youth social action, which is very different from unpaid internships. Will the Minister confirm when the youth full-time social action review will be published?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, I will have to write to the noble Baroness on the last point, but I will say that accurately predicting the number of unpaid interns in this country is extremely difficult. There are no accurate forecasts. To return to prosecutions, it is interesting to note that from a criminal perspective, we prosecute only those companies that are the most pernicious offenders but that HMRC takes action on a civil basis through the civil courts. In 2016-17, 1,134 businesses were taken through civil proceedings and we clawed back nearly £11 million for 98,000 workers. That is progress, but I recognise there is much more we can be doing.