Employment Agencies and Trade Unions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jane Hunt]

The purpose of the first instrument is to lift the current ban on employers bringing in agency staff to help them cope with industrial action. The second instrument makes a long-overdue change to the maximum levels of damages the courts can award against trade unions that take unlawful industrial action.

I will start by examining why the Government are making these changes. Our trade union laws are designed to support an effective and collaborative approach to resolving industrial disputes. They rightly seek to balance the interests of trade unions and their members with those of employers and the wider public. While the Government continue to support the right to strike, it should always be the last resort. The rights of some workers to strike must be balanced against the rights of the wider public to get on with their daily lives. Strikes can, and do, cause significant disruption. That is particularly the case when they take place in important public services such as transport or education. It cannot be right that trade unions can, as we saw in the case of the recent rail strikes, seek to hold the country to ransom if their demands are not met.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the availability of spare teachers, nurses and train drivers to fill the gaps during a strike?

[Jane Hunt]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, which I will take up a little later on in my speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The behaviour and the pay demands of the public sector at this time are unjust. Plenty of my constituents who work in the private sector will receive nowhere near those pay demands, and to threaten strike action to achieve them is an insult to my constituents whose livelihoods will be disrupted and whose taxes will probably have to be increased to pay for them.

However, the saying goes, “Act in haste, repent at leisure.” This agency worker measure was not in our manifesto, and it seems to have been done very quickly in reaction to what is going on in the public sector. Do not get me wrong; I think that action is wrong, but public sector employees represent a small proportion of employees in this country and the private sector has quite a few unscrupulous employers. If people lose their ability to have an effect when they withdraw their labour, I am afraid they will effectively lose the ability to withdraw their labour.

We cannot change the rules to require the service levels that the public demand while ignoring the considerably larger impact on private sector workers. Private sector employers might turn around and say, “I am sorry, but costs have gone up so high that I am cutting your wages back to minimum wage.” Their workers might withdraw their labour, to which the employer might say, “Fine, I will bring in agency workers.” That takes away all the rights of working people to make such decisions. Over history, and certainly many decades back, there have been plenty of examples of people working in terrible conditions, and being able to be part of a collective and to withdraw labour got those conditions improved. We are all gobby in this place—that is how we got here. We all feel it within us, and we all stand up and say something. Most people are not like that at all; they want someone to stand up and do it for them, and we then have negotiations and go to those levels.

I take issue with the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), but I fully expected her speech to go down as it did. In many ways, we have invited it, but I do not believe the cost of living crisis is created by this Government; many issues in the world are creating a cost of living crisis. It is inflationary to try to chase those pressures, and this will have to be fair for the private sector. However, for the first time in my parliamentary career, I shall be voting against the Government tonight on the measure to bring in agency workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow many of the Members in this House, and the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) knows I have great regard for him. I am glad that he discussed issues of the here and now—the P&O issue united the House in opposition to the behaviour of that employer, and it certainly meant a lot for the community of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) —but I was somewhat entertained when he started to go on about indentured labour. I thought we had gone back not to the 1970s, which is part of this debate, but to the 19th century. I found that quite entertaining.

There are two usual ways of getting new staff into businesses, and we are discussing whether they can cross a strike action. Currently, a normal employment business is the one that cannot provide. The other type of employment business—the employment agency model—can. I do not think that I would much know the difference, if I went inside an employment business or an employment agency. At the end of the day, it is the staff that the business wants.

Much has been said about whether this change is being made on the back of the recent strikes. Well, perhaps it is. I have had so many emails from people who could not get to work on that day. We in this House had great inconvenience, which I am afraid was not assisted by possibly the worst London Mayor we have ever seen. I have local residents who have suffered fines because they rarely drive in London; they had to face the ultra low emission zone charge, box junctions everywhere that they could not get out of because of the chaos on the roads, and the local traffic networks that had closed much of London in the first place. We are into fairness. Is that fair on people who are trying to get to work and who usually rely on trains—trains that have had £16 billion of taxpayers’ money over this period, and not one job lost? Is it fair on everybody who is just trying to do the right thing: to run their own business, get to a hospital appointment, get to the doctor, or get to their exams?

I have every regard for the trade unions, but they have intentionally used the cost of living crisis—I do not blame them; best of luck to them—to get more than most people would ever be able to get. Let us not go back to the 1970s wage-price spiral. The hon. Member for Easington said that people’s wages will go backwards. Well, they will go backwards every year if we end up with a wage-price spiral.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

As I said in my speech, some of the wage demands are inappropriate. To put them into context, given the way in which MPs’ salaries are set with the raise in the average public sector pay, if all these wage demands were to go through, we would get an £8,000 pay rise next year. How does my hon. Friend think the public would react to that?

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thought about such issues when I was drafting my speech. There would be absolute outrage from the public if we were to get such pay rises. I do not particularly want such a pay rise; I assure hon. Members of that. We must guard against a wage-price spiral. I support these regulations, because it is not unreasonable for people to be able to get to work.

The other industry that was going down this route was British Airways. BA workers have come to a settlement, which is very good. If BA had effectively closed down over this holiday period, what would that have meant for the employment of London? What would have happened to the tourists who spend a lot of money in London and other tourist areas around the country, including in my own coastal town? What would that strike at BA have done?

I am glad that the dispute has been settled, but it seems to me that unions are picking off certain industries in order to cause the maximum upset, with little regard for normal people trying to go about their normal business. I have every respect for what unions are trying to achieve. That is what they are for, and they have done marvellous work in the past. At this time, however, we need to pull together as a nation—I really wish that we could pull together as a nation.

I have heard from those on the Labour Front Bench. I have heard from my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who raised the spectre of danger. He knows very well that these industries are so regulated and that the staff are so qualified that the reality of agency workers being able to carry out this work is pretty low, so he is raising a spectre of something that does not really exist.

I am supportive of these measures. I hope that they do not need to be used. I hope that we can get common sense, get people back to work and get some of these disputes settled.

Endometriosis Workplace Support

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of supporting people with endometriosis in the workplace.

What a pleasure it is to have you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Davies.

It would take 20 days, at 24 hours a day, to name every woman in this country who suffers from endometriosis. That is the scale of the problem that we are dealing with. It is bad enough that it takes eight years on average to get a diagnosis, and that there is a lack of settled opinion on the surgery required. It is also bad enough that the blunt truth is that, even in today’s age, the main coverage given to this debilitating disease seems to be when a man stands up and talks about it. I have fantastic support from people such as the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and other hon. Members, who have supported at every step of the way the debates that I have brought to the House; there is absolute cross-party support for tackling women’s health issues.

Unfortunately, I am often asked, “Why are you doing this, as a man?” I remind people that as Members, we represent everybody in our constituencies, and for most of us, probably over 50% of our constituents are women. It seems bizarre to question why a Member of Parliament would raise issues about the opposite sex; to me, a constituent is a constituent. Endometriosis is such a wide-ranging affliction that affects so many women, and it is so unrecognised.

Today I seek to talk about women’s suffering in the workplace, which mainly comes about through a complete lack of knowledge about this disease. I will start by describing endometriosis. I am grateful to Heather Guidone, board certified patient advocate and surgical programme director at the Centre for Endometriosis Care, for sending me the text entitled “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, which states:

“Endometriosis is a systemic, inflammatory disease characterized by the presence of endometrial-like tissue found outside the uterus. Endometriosis has significantly negative impact on the physical, emotional, reproductive, and sexual health, financial security, relationships, careers and schooling of those affected. Commonly located in the abdominopelvic region, the disease has also been found in virtually every organ system including the lungs. Mistakenly referred to by some as simply ‘painful periods,’ symptoms are not limited to menstruation and often become chronic over time. It is also entirely possible for those who do not menstruate e.g., adolescents, post-hysterectomy, post-menopause to struggle with endometriosis. This extraordinarily complex illness has body-wide impact, with sustained inflammation, angiogenesis, adhesions, fibrosis, scarring, and local and neuronal infiltration leading to a multitude of systemic issues. Chronic pain, anatomic distortion, adhesions, organ dysfunction, non-menstrual abdominal and pelvic pain, infertility and pregnancy loss, painful sex, bowel and bladder pain and dysfunction, lower back and leg pain, severe bloating, crippling fatigue, debilitating period pain among those who menstruate, even lung collapse and much more are hallmark of endometriosis. Despite the preponderance of systemic symptoms and effects, however, many patient complaints are unfortunately trivialized or outright dismissed at the healthcare level. The disease is also rarely present alone and is commonly associated with multiple comorbidities and secondary pain drivers including various gynepathologies; chronic fatigue; coronary heart disease; rheumatoid arthritis; adverse obstetrical outcomes like loss, preterm birth, spontaneous hemoperitoneum in pregnancy, obstetric bleeding, pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia and more; painful bladder syndrome; and even an increased risk of certain cancers. Often called a ‘disease of theories,’ definitive causes have been under debate for over a century, yet no single theory yet explains endometriosis in all affected. Most likely, a composite of several mechanisms is involved.”

With millions of sufferers and long-standing recognition of the disease, it is shocking that women suffer such enormous discrimination in the workplace for a common disease. To summarise, I will quote from a paper I was sent by Victoria Williams, a researcher at the Open University, from her PhD thesis, “The experience of endometriosis in the workplace and the influence of menstrual policy: leaning to precarious work to manage a ‘precarious condition’”. She says:

“Endometriosis often hinders the ability to work to the same capacity every hour on every day of a traditional working calendar, and as such participants talked of not being able to hold down full time work, leading to multiple part time roles or precarious work situations, drawn by the flexibility they offered. However, the supposed flexibility is often a double bind with lack of stable contracts, loss of state provisioning and the financial impact of having to take time off for surgery (often multiple surgeries). As such, precarious work may be appealing to people with endometriosis because of the promise of flexibility but they may equally feel and be even less protected.”

I want to expand on that by talking about the sufferers of this terrible disease and the effects it has in the workplace.

We have all been ill. Unfortunately, we have all had a rather nasty stomach upset at some point. We may have been at work when we were suddenly taken short and had to nip out to the bathroom. I do not want to get too graphic—we all know what that feels like. I am sure we have all had a very embarrassing incident at some point in our life. Mr Davies, can you imagine experiencing that fear—and, indeed, that incident—every single day in the workplace?

I have been given examples of that particular situation by women who have been at work, in a meeting, when a sudden bowel movement has given them seconds to get out and get to the right place. Yet one person who gave me such an example told me that her employers tutted and said she was unreliable: “She’s always nipping off to the bathroom.” I do not believe that people are mean or bad. I fundamentally believe that most human beings in society want to do the right thing by people, but if people do not know about the situation, ignorance can have some very nasty consequences. We have to start raising a higher level of awareness of this issue.

National Endometriosis Survivors Support has sent me a catalogue of quotations, with more than 60 patients outlining their experiences. I am going to share about 20 of them with hon. Members.

No.1:

“Having endometriosis has made my career a mine field. I cannot progress how I wish to due to time taken off sick. I have been undermined and people have compared my condition to other conditions with complete ignorance:—suggesting that I was exaggerating my symptoms. Working life is not compatible with suffering from endometriosis—it’s too much and no one understands!”

No. 2:

“I was asked what I was going to do to make things better and stop myself being sick. It’s an incurable disease.’

No. 3:

“I’ve almost lost my job due to discrimination because I couldn’t work as fast when I was in crippling pain.”

No. 4:

“Almost lost my job in a major company despite them saying they’d treat endometriosis occasions of absence separately that wasn’t the case. Also wouldn’t let me home when I was covered in blood to change my clothes and made me go purchase new clothes and told me to use work showers.”

No. 5:

“I was in hospital due to my endo a little over a month ago, I couldn’t walk. Had to call in for work, which I rarely do unless I genuinely can’t help it, they asked if I was being admitted because if I wasn’t they wanted me to ‘make up for it’ by working the next day.”

These are real experiences from real people in the workplace. There is lots of evidence out there.

No. 6:

“Due to the fact that I had two laparoscopies, I had a large gap in my employment record. Despite a very good CV, my applications were rejected because employers saw only the employment gap.”

No. 7:

“I haven’t been able to work for 7 years now and it depressing.”

No. 8:

“Was misdiagnosed as IBS for 4 yrs, my boss said I was exaggerating it, refused to let me do flexi time to help. After surgery, I was signed off for an additional week, and when I called to tell her, she swore and slammed the phone down. Ended up severely depressed. I was suicidal. She brushed it off, and kept calling me Menopausal Mandy.”

I have said it before on the Floor of the House and I will say it again: women are dying. They are killing themselves. They are spending day after day in chronic, crippling pain and do not even have the support of a workplace. That level of destruction of women’s lives is killing women, and it has got to stop. We have to get a better understanding of what millions of women are going through in this country.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful speech. The issue is absolutely about conditions like endometriosis, but does he agree that it is also about a basic lack of compassion for women who have periods every month? In January, Dr Rosie Baruah backed the British Medical Association’s call for period products to be provided in all NHS staff toilets. She said the products should be viewed as a basic necessity, not a luxury. The outcry from some men was utterly appalling. The lack of understanding of how challenging it can be for someone when they bleed through their clothes and do not have access to products or toilets was shocking. We need to do much more to get a basic understanding across society and to put policies in place—for endometriosis, but also just for periods.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am so grateful to the hon. Lady, who raises a point that comes up time and again. I do not believe that the majority of people are that unkind, but they just do not know what they are talking about. Her point speaks to a wider issue. People think it is acceptable for there to be an outcry about supporting women in the workplace. That is the problem we face. We have to change societal thinking on these issues.

I will continue sharing the experiences of patients. No. 9:

“I have to use my annual leave after operations in case I get ill during the year and need time off.”

No. 10:

“The problem, they find another way to get you out. They go for competency & make your life hell, picking up on every little point & you don’t have a leg to stand on. I’m so miserable at the moment.”

No. 11:

“This debate couldn’t come at a better time my boss is starting to give me a rough time because I was really rough last week and I even collapsed in work and ended up in hospital and he still expected me to be back in work the following day and this week he gave me a warning letter about my days off and now it’s really worrying me.”

No. 12:

“I was off sick and recently dismissed whilst off sick.”

No. 13:

“I lost my job years ago due to having a few periods off sick for surgeries and some emergency surgeries. All of these were for endometriosis. I worked for the NHS!!! They don’t care whether you have genuine reasons or not, other people take time off for a common cold etc whereas I went to work in severe pain most days; but the hard work I put in was not appreciated.”

What we are dealing with here is constructive dismissal, which is illegal in this country, but is just being swept under the carpet.

No. 14:

“I’ve unfortunately been put on redundancy notice. My Endometriosis sickness has been scored against me as well as my productivity not being the same as everyone else. I have an occupational health report stating to reconsider my targets due to me taking codeine to manage the pain. My question is, is Endometriosis classed as a disability? Is this discrimination?”

No. 15:

“At 18 I was sacked from a nursing home due to having too many days off related to endometriosis flare ups.”

No. 16:

“I was recently dismissed from work whilst off sick because I was off so long so now jobless. I’m 35.”

No. 17:

“I’m 28 currently in full time work but due to the lack of knowledge of this awful disease I’m currently under investigation for fitness to do my job. I work in a nursery. This is all due to having sick days (which I don’t get paid for). With more knowledge and research more women wouldn’t have to try and fight with their management to prove they are sick and can still do their job.”

No. 18:

“At age 21 I was dismissed for having too many sick days due to endo. At age 25 my contract was terminated while I was laid in a hospital bed, after emergency surgery due to endo. At age 28 my job was suspended and then terminated due to them not believing the reasons for absence, i.e. Endometriosis, and I was laid in a hospital bed the day I had my hysterectomy when they emailed me to tell me. I’m 29 now.”

No. 19:

“I was forced to resign from my permanent teaching position while I waited for surgery. The new head didn’t believe how ill I was. I’m much better off mentally being self employed, but not financially.”

I emphasise the examples about teaching and the NHS. When we raise such issues, people sometimes think that we are talking about private employers. We may have a vision of the bad boss who says, “Silly woman!” and that sort of thing, but I am actually giving examples from the public sector. I will be bringing forward debates later this year for the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education to respond to, but does not the fact that a teacher was dismissed because the headteacher did not understand endometriosis paint an even more worrying picture—that girls are not being told what a healthy period is, and none of them knows what this disease is? How can someone possibly know that they have a disease if they do not know that that disease exists?

The examples are piling up. I had over 60 examples, which I have whittled down to this list. Here is the final quotation on this point:

“Benefits—DWP are not recognising endo as a disease/pushing you to work. When I have completed a work capability assessment they found me suitable for work, have had to push again for a mandatory reconsideration. This goes for UC & PIP as I am currently going through the process of both.”

However, there were some positives. One person said:

“From age 11 I spent the week off school each time my period arrived. I couldn’t move as the pain was too much and so heavy I was changing pads far too often than would be allowed to leave a class to go to the toilet. The school called me and my mum in for a meeting and I was made to go in or face a disciplinary. Quite a few times I bled through which meant taking spare clothes. As a teenager this was mortifying. Now as an adult (32) I have made my employers and colleagues aware and I’m in a job where I can just nip to the toilet. I am also very lucky to have supportive colleagues that help when I am doubled over.”

Here is another one:

“When I was 14 I was sent home from school for being violently sick. Kept being sick continuously until later that day my time of the month started. I work in a pub and over the last 5 years have collapsed in the bathroom, in the back room. I have to have moments in the back room because I’m in so much pain I can’t stand up. Let alone smile at customers. I’ve been sent home a few times when it becomes clear there is no way it is possible for me to stay there. I have to have extra time to sit down and my boss and I have had to put lifting bans in place or by the end of the night, when I start off OK, I can’t walk and I’m in agony from lifting too much and pulling all the organs around. I often have to sleep for hours the day after to try and recover from my shift as it physically takes it out of me and I find it increasingly hard to push through. Thankfully I have a really supportive team or I wouldn’t be able to support myself to live. But I think back to previous bosses and all I can think is how I wouldn’t be there anymore if I still had any of them. Because they wouldn’t have tolerated and accommodated my health.”

In 2020, the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis published an inquiry, some of which I will read out. This is about the impact of a supportive employer:

“For the last 9 months I have missed almost a week per month, but my work have been very supportive of this as they know I have been undergoing tests. I am very lucky to have an employer who is so understanding”

Another woman said:

“Only one workplace classified me as having a disability which was extremely helpful on days where I was in pain, my boss was fully informed and would have no issue with me saying to her, I have to head home straight away, and I will be back in 2 days.”

Here is another one:

“I have been very lucky that my work have been wonderful. They make adjustments for me working from home when needed and it’s no problem if I can’t work because I’m in too much pain.”

The report also talked about employee rights and employer obligations. The Equality Act 2010 states that a person is disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment that

“has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on…ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.”

When endometriosis is debilitating, due to the symptoms experienced and/or the long-term impact of surgery, it meets the Act’s definition of disability, as with other chronic conditions.

Employees with endometriosis who experience debilitating symptoms have the right to ask their employer for reasonable adjustments at work that would enable the individual to continue working or would reduce the disadvantage suffered due to having a disability, in this case a chronic condition. Reasonable adjustments include, though are not limited to, flexible or reduced working hours; reassigning work or duties; time off for medical appointments; and working from home. Employers must consider requests for reasonable adjustments and cover the cost of adjustments agreed. However, we know of cases where women with endometriosis have requested reasonable adjustments, for example, to work a particular shift pattern or reduce working hours, and have had those requests refused.

The pandemic has had a significant impact. The report on endometriosis and working from home says:

“Both the 2020 APPG inquiry and our 2021 Covid Impact Survey found that those with endometriosis who were able to work from home reported it as a positive development, in particular in relation to better managing symptoms, including…Being able to undertake physical pain management techniques more easily…Being able to take breaks/lie down when needed…Not having to commute to work when experiencing painful symptoms.

Some reported a positive impact on mental health due to enabling better symptom management.

Our 2021 Covid Impact Survey found that 69% of those working entirely from home found it positive, as did 51% of those working partly from home.”

Respondents to the 2020 APPG inquiry made comments about the positive impact of working from home:

“Now have option of working from home, so this helps with not having time sick and then missing pay.”

“I am lucky with my work now I am able to work from home if too unwell to travel.”

“I work from home so I got my hours around the times I feel okay. When my symptoms are bad I am often so tired I just have to sleep for most of the day.”

It is not a completely negative story that I am painting today. There are good employers out there and good examples of where employers have been able to work around it. That brings me on to endometriosis-friendly employers. Endometriosis UK has an endometriosis-friendly employer scheme, which supports organisations to make simple adjustments for those with endometriosis to work effectively while managing a chronic condition. Employers sign up to the endometriosis-friendly employer principles and commit to working to implement them. The principles are: leadership and management support; tackling stigma and cultural change; communications to increase awareness of endometriosis; and promoting the support available for employees with the condition.

We can draw quite a lot of comfort from that, but I put to the Minister that we have got to push that out to employers. I am not going to ask the Minister for new legislation, for new Bills to come forward to the House. I believe that there is plenty of law in place, but it is not being properly used. That is more than likely because employers do not know about this terrible, debilitating disease.

As I draw to a conclusion, I would like to highlight the opportunity to link the issue with the menopause taskforce. The Government press release on Friday stated:

“Minister for Women’s Health and co-chair of the UK Menopause Taskforce Maria Caulfield, said: ‘For too long women have gone unsupported and unheard when it comes to specific women’s health issues. This is especially true when it comes to the understanding of and treatment for the menopause’ It was agreed the taskforce will meet every 2 months, and future meetings will be scheduled by theme which will include…healthcare provision…education and awareness…research evidence and data”,

and “menopause in the workplace”. So we are recognising one condition of women in the workplace—the menopause —but not recognising endometriosis. There is no taskforce out there to do that. I know this matter is not the responsibility of the Minister’s Department. It will have to be something that works across Departments in many different ways.

There are still women at a huge disadvantage in the workplace when they try to start a family, especially those with fertility problems. I am grateful to Dr Larisa Corda for passing me information from an organisation called Fertility Matters at Work, who sent me the following statistics: 72% said that their workplace did not have a fertility policy in place; 83% said that covid-19 had made managing fertility treatment while at work easier; 68% said the treatment had a significant impact on their mental and emotional wellbeing; only 1.7% had a fertility policy that met their needs; and 69.5% took sick leave during the treatment.

Although this debate is primarily focused on supporting sufferers of endometriosis, I urge the Minister to look at the range of women’s barriers in the workplace that still exist today—in the 21st century! Our society should surely have moved beyond the glass ceiling. In fact, it is not so much a glass ceiling as bulletproof glass. There are probably weaker windows in President Biden’s Beast. The glass ceiling is almost impenetrable.

Perhaps today’s debate will start to move the issue forward, because we are going to keep the pressure up. I started this debate in October 2019. Then we had a general election and a pandemic, and we have had to start again. Can it be that nothing happened in two years because we were not raising it here, when we had already raised it in a debate in October 2019? It is important that we do not let this issue go.

I have five asks of the Minister today. First, promote the endometriosis-friendly employer scheme. Secondly, work with other Departments to interact with the menopause taskforce and the shocking lack of support for women with fertility problems. Thirdly, get the Department for Work and Pensions to recognise that endometriosis can be a disability. Fourthly, ensure employers fully understand the Equality Act to protect endometriosis sufferers in the workplace. Fifthly, create a scheme to promote endometriosis-friendly employers.

We are only halfway through this Parliament—I know it seems a lot longer. We have plenty of time to do plenty about the issue in this Parliament, and we have to. The time has come to settle this terrible, debilitating strain on women who are owed so much more. This society—never mind what the Government and Parliament do—is letting them down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I thank you, Mr Davies, and all hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate. I thank the Minister for the many positive comments he has made. There is much legislation and work coming forward that we will need to assess.

I will take this opportunity to correct the record. My figures at the start were out of date for some reason. I said that it would 20 days at 24 hours a day to count the number of sufferers with endometriosis. That was based on 1.5 million women; it is actually 3 million women, so that is 40 days. As we go into the season of Lent, perhaps people could reflect, on every day in Lent, on just how many names they might be able to list in the time they are awake during those 24 hours each day.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of supporting people with endometriosis in the workplace.

Shale Gas Exploration: Planning Permission

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Claire Perry]

I am sure that the hon. Lady engages extensively with her constituents. I spend a lot of time talking to communities, and to the representatives of former coalmining communities. In many cases, they are convinced that shale gas exploration could bring high-value jobs and economic development safely to parts of the country that have been left behind by successive Governments.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I will expand on comments made by the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron). My constituency is an area that can be fracked, and has a rich history of mining, especially in the village of Allerton Bywater. Because that history of mining is so long, there are many unmapped mine shafts and mine workings in the area, and a great many of my constituents are gravely concerned that, with the injection of water and the other things that are going on, there is a real possibility of geological movement and sinkholes. We are talking about a planning issue, and it is vital that the Minister hears on behalf of my constituents that the situation of communities varies hugely. Where there are former mine workings, there are real concerns about the geological impact of so many unmapped mine shafts.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the complexity of the geology. He is absolutely right that local geological knowledge and seismic management and measurement are, and will remain, a vital part of any exploration or production site. However, many of his constituents will have been told that there are massive seismic risks from any form of shale gas exploration. In fact, our environmental standards are so tight that if there is a seismic tremor less than that brought about by the rollercoaster on Blackpool seafront, that well process—

Draft Companies (Miscellaneous Reporting) Regulations 2018

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 General Committees

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Gentleman is impatient. I announced our response to the Taylor review in my second week as the responsible Minister. The consultations closed two weeks ago, and we are busily working on a response to them, which we will come forward with as soon as possible. We are keen to ensure that we deliver a whole new set of rights and protections to workers across the United Kingdom, and we are keen to demonstrate that we do not need the European Union to protect workers’ rights. We are committed to extending and going further and faster in this country.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

My hon. Friend does himself a disservice, because when that report was published, he immediately came to the House and spoke about clamping down on unpaid internships, which is an issue close to my heart. As he says, the Government are leading on rights. I have introduced Bills about that in all the Parliaments I have been in, and Conservatives are taking the latest private Member’s Bill about it through the House of Lords. I congratulate him on all the work he has been doing on the Taylor review.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words, but there is no doubt that he has led the way on these protections. I commend him for the steadfastness and determination that he showed in ensuring that we bring in protections for some of the most vulnerable people in the workplace.

The hon. Member for Sefton Central pretty much asked why we are not implementing the Labour party proposal for a pay ratio of no more than 20:1. It is not for the Government to set arbitrary caps on individual companies. We will drive the transparency and accountability that can expose unjustified executive pay, and that is what we are doing with pay ratio reporting. The Labour party’s proposal is fraught with legal and other difficulties. Would a Labour Government extend the 20:1 pay ratio to non-UK companies bidding for Government contracts? That would raise state aid and World Trade Organisation issues. If they would not, that would put UK contracting companies at a clear disadvantage. There is no sense to the proposal that the Labour party puts forward.

In relation to prompt payment, on which we share common ground, we all want to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises in particular in this country are paid promptly and fairly. Section 172 and the draft regulations require companies to set out their relationship with their contractors and how they treat their supply chain. Another part of this important corporate reform that the Government are bringing forward is payment practice reporting. That is now live and we are seeing real evidence of how bigger companies pay their supply chain. That will go a long way in providing the kind of evidence, transparency and changes in behaviour that we want in this country.

Taylor Review

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths]

Allow me to try to reassure the hon. Lady that those issues are being taken care of. She will be aware that a Green Paper on social care is imminent, and those social care issues will be covered within it. She talks about when workers in the gig economy are clocking on and off and what constitutes their working time. If she has read the report, she will know that we recognise that the law should be clearer about when people are being paid and the hours that they work. We will address that within the consultation and come up with firm proposals.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate the Minister on the positive way he is taking forward the Taylor review and the Government’s ambitions. Back in May 2014, I brought forward a ten-minute rule Bill to ban unpaid internships. In 2016, I introduced a private Member’s Bill to ban unpaid internships—which the Labour party did not support, I hasten to add. When the Minister is dealing with the section of the Taylor review on unpaid internships, I urge him to liaise closely with our noble Friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, whose private Member’s Bill on that issue is in Committee in the other place at the moment.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank my hon. Friend for the great effort and the huge amount of work he has put into standing up for the rights of those young people who are being abused in relation to internships. He has raised that issue many times in the House, and I can reassure him that we are cracking down on sectors where unpaid interns are doing the job of a worker. There will be proper enforcement, and young people who feel they are being abused in that way will be covered. The enforcement will be strengthened, and we will ensure that those people get the wage they deserve.

National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Friday 4th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I fear that if the Bill becomes law there is a danger that what now appears to be the settled law as laid down by these cases will be thrown into doubt and there might be a whole raft of new cases with new definitions to be challenged in the courts. As I will say later, although this Bill refers to “employment practice”—a new term to me, which I will come on to—there is no clear definition, as far as I can see, of what is meant by that, and I anticipate it will have to be tested in the courts and in industrial tribunals.

Let me turn to the case of Hudson against TPG Web Publishing Ltd in 2011. It was also held in this case that the claimant was a worker. Keri Hudson worked eight hours a day between 10 am and 6 pm for a publishing company and supervised a team on a website. The employer had considered paying her but decided not to. The tribunal concluded that she was a worker with a contractual relationship existing between herself and the employer and was therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage. The reneging on the payment was a key factor because it demonstrated that the respondent recognised that the position at least could be a paid position.

At that time the National Union of Journalists said of the judgment:

“This sends a clear message to media companies that if they treat interns like cheap labour, the NUJ will take you through the courts.”

It is clear from this case that the issue of interns who are actually carrying out work has been tested in industrial tribunals, which have found that if someone is working, they are liable to be paid. Unions have, to be fair to them, taken up this cause and are alert to the problem, and in appropriate instances take cases to a tribunal.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend, and this draws into comments I made, as do his opening comments about the legalities around national minimum wage law. I said at the opening of my speech that we still have people not being paid when they should be. Does my hon. Friend feel that people have the courage to go forward, even with union backing, or might they be worried about the effect it could have on the future of that industry?

[Mr Nuttall]

I rather suspect that any individual who brings a case is more concerned about their own contractual position than the wider industry. They might be concerned about their position within the industry, and I wonder whether that is what my hon. Friend is driving at. But I imagine the industry would respect the judgments of tribunals and accept that an individual who had the confidence to challenge an employer on the interpretation of an Act of Parliament and was able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the tribunal that they were on the right side of that would be someone employers should be looking to engage, because it would be someone who had the confidence, willingness and ability to take on a larger employer. If they manage to win that case, I would have thought that would only enhance their opportunity of being given a job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

It is nice to think life should be like that, but I am not sure that it is like that.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is entitled to his view, but as a former employer myself that is the view I would take—although others might come to a different view.

In the Hudson case, as in the Vetta case, the tribunal determined that essentially this was not an internship, but was a job for which Ms Hudson should be paid, and it awarded her unpaid wages and holiday pay. I submit that on the basis of the findings in those cases the Bill offers nothing new to protect workers. If someone is actually working despite the fact that they might be called an intern, they are covered.

We should consider how many people would be covered by this Bill, even if it were to be of any value and brought into law. A written parliamentary question of 24 June this year by the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) asked the Business Secretary whether there were plans to gather data on the prevalence of paid and unpaid internships. At that time the then Skills Minister was my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), and I am sure I speak for the whole House when I say we sincerely hope he is soon able to rejoin us in the House.

He replied:

“The Government has no current plans to quantify the number of paid and unpaid interns. There is no legal definition of an intern, but all those who qualify as ‘workers’ are entitled to the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage.”

Let us reflect for a moment on why the Government were unable to provide a more specific answer to that relatively straightforward question. I submit that it would entail reporting by businesses, small and large, on the details of the thousands of interns who are employed in offices, shops and factories right across this country. Some companies would have hundreds in the course of a year and, given the nature of internships, which can often be for short periods of time—sometimes for a week or two weeks—can the House imagine the practical difficulties in trying to ascertain an accurate number?

In 2010, a briefing note on interns and the national minimum wage was sent to the then employment relations Minister, Ed Davey, and the then universities Minister, David Willetts. Sadly, that briefing note has been heavily redacted. I wish it had not been, because it would have been very interesting to read the whole document. Perhaps we could speculate about why it was so heavily redacted; the House will be pleased to know that I will not so speculate. The briefing note, which was released on 15 July 2010 following a freedom of information request, said:

“No single data source can provide an accurate estimate of the number of paid or unpaid internships. Unpaid workers are particularly hard to capture in national surveys as they are not on the PAYE system. Given the paucity of data, we have had to construct an estimate for the total number of interns based heavily on reports from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), combined with a number of other assumptions. This estimate is 50-70,000 internships, of which 10-15,000 are unpaid, but due to data limitations any figures should be treated as purely indicative.”

The Sutton Trust estimated in November 2014 that 31% of graduate interns in this country had reported working for no pay. Those data were based on the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s leavers survey of 2012-13. More recently, the Low Pay Commission said in spring this year regarding non-payment of the national minimum wage:

“This year we received fewer responses from stakeholders on this issue. While this in itself could be interpreted as evidence of an improving situation, the feedback we have received from stakeholders who have responded indicated that the issue remains live.”

To be fair, the report also referred to discussions with unions and expressed concerns about non-payment of the minimum wage in the arts and entertainment industry in particular. Clearly, however, there are real difficulties in quantifying the size of the problem. Although we do not know whether it is getting better or worse, if fewer stakeholders are contacting the Low Pay Commission about concerns over unpaid internships, maybe it is not such a critical concern to people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell posted on his website a call for evidence from the people of Yorkshire who had had experiences of unpaid internships. In his brief opening remarks, he was unable to expand on the sort of response he had to that call for evidence. I commend him for doing his research, but it seems to me that it would have been better to ask for the evidence first and then try to look for a solution only if a problem could be identified. I am not convinced that the problem is exactly what my hon. Friend thinks it is. Even if there is a problem, I am absolutely certain that this Bill will not solve it. In my view, it will create more problems.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

To put my hon. Friend’s mind at rest, the problem was identified many years ago, and some of the examples that I received were used in my speech today.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s report of that. I have been completely consistent in my approach to the proposed legislation. I voted against the previous Bill when it was put to a Division a couple of years ago, so he and I have both been consistent.

As it happens, I was an employer when the national minimum wage legislation was introduced. At the time, I suspect I was employing about 30 or 40 people, so I know from first-hand experience about the impact that it had, not just on me but on many of my clients, which were small businesses. It undoubtedly took up some staff time; it was new legislation and we had to look at how to comply with it. To be fair, although rogue employers will do all they can to break the rules—that will always be the case—the truth is that most businesses and most small employers bend over backwards to try to comply with laws that emanate from this place. Although some extra administration was involved, I do not want to over-egg the pudding; it did not take up a huge amount of time or dominate our practice, but we did have to deal with it.

The biggest problem was not so much the administration but the economic costs of the minimum wage. I refer not so much to those who were not covered by the legislation—in our small practice, perhaps only one or two employees felt any benefit initially from the imposition of the minimum wage—but to the knock-on effect that it had on wage differentials. That was the economic problem for small businesses. If, for example, the salary of the lowest-paid worker—say, the office junior—is increased to the same level as, say, the junior typists, they can legitimately and understandably claim that in order to restore the pay differential, they should have a pay increase. That has a knock-on effect on the next grade up, and so on. The ripple effect of increasing the wages at one level can soon be felt much higher up the pay grade.

Turning to the engagement of additional staff, the fact is that if an employer has work that needs doing, they will engage a new member of staff. That may be part-time, of course—there might not be enough work to fill a full-time role, but the employer will engage either a part-time or full-time staff member. I accept that there might be unscrupulous employers who, seeing a short-term amount of work that needs doing, might seek to engage an unpaid intern to do that work. As I demonstrated earlier, however, my view—which, to be fair, is backed up by cases—is that that situation would already be covered if the person involved could demonstrate that they were carrying out work and were entitled to be paid the national minimum wage. So who would be covered by my hon. Friend’s Bill? People who are doing work are already covered, so the only other people who could be covered are those who are not working: the ones who are watching. Is my hon. Friend really suggesting that the national minimum wage should be paid to people who are simply watching someone else work?

I shall let hon. Members into a little secret. What goes on in this Chamber might be considered a spectator sport, and quite rightly, but I take the view that running a small business is not. When I was running a small business, I could not afford to pay people to come and watch me work. I did not mind paying them if they were carrying out work, but I could not afford to pay them simply to come and watch. I did not mind them coming to do work experience, and I got lots of requests—I still do, as a Member of Parliament—from people asking to come and spend time with me. I said, “Of course, there’s no problem. I will chat to you and I will give you advice.” But I could not pay them to do that. The reality is that an employer, and particularly a small business, cannot afford to pay people who want to sit and watch and then simply walk away having added no value whatever to the business.

Let us ask ourselves what determines a wage on the open market. It is an essential truth that work should be compensated according to productivity. A wage is the price at which a worker is prepared to sell his or her labour; the wage is the balance between what the employer is prepared to pay and at what level the labourer is prepared to sell. The employer will of course take into account the productivity of the labourer, and the labourer will consider how much they value themselves working for that employer. They will also take into account the experience of working there and the working environment. Someone who is prepared to spend time going on work experience—or an unpaid internship, if that is what we want to call it—is demonstrating that they value the experience of just being there and the contacts that they will make while they are there. In their eyes, those considerations cancel out the need for any monetary compensation. I believe that it is absolutely right that an individual should be free to decide for themselves the value of their own labour.

So what would happen if that basic arrangement were interfered with? What would happen if the law said—as I believe would be the case if the Bill became law—that an employer would have to pay to be watched? The obvious conclusion is that a black market would develop, as happens in any market where the price of a product or commodity is set at an artificially high level, higher than the genuine market level. If someone wants to do a few weeks’ work experience—whether it is called an internship or not—without being paid, the law should not prevent that from happening.

Let me deal briefly with the claim that unscrupulous employers are somehow exploiting a loophole. It seems to me that there is much more likelihood of an unscrupulous employer exploiting an individual who is being paid, because they will then expect a return on their payment. If someone is not being paid at all, it is surely far more difficult to exploit them and far more likely that that intern doing work experience would simply walk away.



I want to look in detail at the problems in the Bill. The first problem revolves around the definition in clause 1, which states:

“For the purposes of this Act, a workplace internship is an employment practice in which a person (“the intern”)—

undertakes regular work or provides regular services in the United Kingdom for—

(i) another person;

(ii) a company;

(iii) a limited liability partnership; or

(iv) a public authority; and”.

At the moment, the word “intern” has no legal definition. The official Government website, gov.uk, states:

“Internships are sometimes understood to be positions requiring a higher level of qualification than other forms of work experience, and are associated with gaining experience for a professional career.”

The key term in clause 1 is “employment practice”. Those two words are central to what I would call the obfuscation at the heart of the Bill. What is an employment practice? I venture to suggest that it is actually an employment contract. In other words, this clause is attempting to cover every employment contract in just about every conceivable working environment. Perhaps my hon. Friend would agree, and say that that is exactly what he is trying to do. Perhaps he is trying to make this so watertight and all-encompassing that absolutely no one could escape from it, but let us consider for a moment the problems that could arise from that.

Let us take the example of someone who is setting up a gardening business and regularly volunteering their time to maintain the garden of, say, an elderly neighbour. For the gardener, who wants to work, this is an opportunity not only to help the neighbour but to demonstrate to the neighbourhood that they are capable of the job, which could lead to paid work. Clause 1(b) states:

“(b) the purpose of the employment practice is—

(i) that the intern meets learning objectives or gains experience of working for the employer listed in section 1(a); and

(ii) to provide practical experience in an occupation or profession.”

We know from clause 1(a) that the intern could be working for a sole individual, which would cover the example of someone wanting to work for their neighbour. In that scenario, could the neighbour become liable to pay the national minimum wage? To me, that seems very likely. I submit that that would be an unintended consequence that could result in a financial cost when the person was simply trying to do someone a favour.

Nowhere in the Bill is there a definition of regular work or regular services, a point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. While we are fortunate that the Bill comes with some explanatory notes, they do not give any further clues as to what actually amounts to regular work or regular services. When something is not specifically defined, there is the potential, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) in an earlier intervention, not only for further references being necessary in order for an industrial tribunal to clarify the situation, but for terms to be widely construed. If someone is called in to do some filing in an office every Tuesday, is that regular? If a volunteer assists with a monthly live event, is that regular? It clearly means that something happens more than once, but there is no clear guidance.

I suspect that what would happen with the Bill is that the term “internship”, which has been adopted and is widely used and which this Bill seeks to outlaw, will be rapidly replaced by another term. People will try to get around the legislation by using another term—perhaps “work shadowing”. It may be that work shadowing is already covered by the Bill—we would have to see—but if someone has not been promised future work, that situation could be caught by the Bill. I would therefore submit that the Bill’s scope is too wide.

Clause 3 attempts to narrow that scope by setting out some exclusions. It excludes students who are required to do work experience as part of their course. In other words, the Bill recognises that work experience, when part of a wider course of study, does not have to be paid. To be fair, my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell touched on that in his remarks, but I did not intervene because he made it clear that he was not going to take any more interventions. However, the Bill’s true effect will be to discriminate against precisely those who have been told this morning that it seeks to help. If someone is lucky enough to go to college or university, the Bill says that it is fine for them to go on a placement or have 12 months’ work experience. If someone is not that lucky and just wants the opportunity to see what workplace life is like, the Bill states that an employer must pay them. That cannot be right. I am unsure whether that has been thought through by the Bill’s promoter, but it seems that that is exactly what would happen if the Bill became law.

The Bill also excludes those “of compulsory school age”, who are excluded from the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 anyway; those who are doing apprenticeships; and those otherwise excluded under devolved powers. However, I now want to comment on clause 3(1)(d). Clause 3 states:

“For the purposes of this Act, section 2 shall not apply if the person is—

(a) a student at a higher or further education institution…

(b) of compulsory school age;

(c) undertaking an approved English apprenticeship…

(d) meets the terms of a definition set out in regulations made by the Secretary of State or, as the case may be, the relevant Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland Ministers.”

Taken together, those words state that

“section 2 shall not apply if the person is-

… meets the terms of a definition”.

I gently suggest to my hon. Friend that there must be some words missing from clause 3(1)(d)—probably “someone who”. I think it should say that section 2 “shall not apply if the person is—someone who meets the terms of a definition”. It does not make sense as it stands.

The clause also runs the risk of different regulations being made in different parts of this United Kingdom. I hope that my hon. Friend will say that I have missed something and that that is not the case, but the clause seems to suggest that if regulations are made by the Secretary of State in this place or by relevant Ministers in the devolved Administrations, different classes of people would be excluded in different parts of the United Kingdom. Is that the case? Perhaps my hon. Friend will reflect on that and comment on it when he winds up.

I am conscious of the fact that many other Members wish to speak , but I want to talk about the many other people who have looked into this problem. In 2011, the policy group Perspective produced a paper called “Arguing for the introduction of paid internships”, detailing international comparisons of the action taken on this issue. It referred to the 2010 report from the International Labour Office “Global Employment Trends for Youth”, which looked at international comparisons. I do not know whether my hon. Friend, in drawing up the Bill, has examined the situation in other countries and whether the problem he has identified has been solved anywhere else in the world—it may well have been. Some countries, such as Canada and South Korea, have committed to funding internships in key sectors, which may be one way of doing this; we could simply throw Government money at it and say, “We will pay for people who need work experience.” South Korea extended its state-supported youth internship programme and introduced wage subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises that engaged interns on regular contracts at the conclusion of their internship. I would not want to go down that road, but it has happened in other countries.

More interestingly, the Institute of Economic Affairs, perhaps spurred into action by the publication of my hon. Friend’s Bill, published a discussion paper in August entitled “And how much do you earn?”. One of its conclusions was that the current minimum wage legislation “should be simplified”, and I strongly support that. If this Bill were to be amended in Committee and to go down that road, there would be a lot of merit in that approach. The authors of that paper, Ryan Bourne and J. R. Shackleton, acknowledged that the national minimum wage has “broad public support”, but they said that

“the introduction of the National Living Wage threatens to lead to a populist arms race in terms of statutory minimum pay rates.”

The paper made a number of suggestions, including reducing the number of bands to just two, one for people 18 and over and the other for people 25 and over. It also suggested that the Government should:

“re-emphasise the independence of the Low Pay Commission, allowing it to continue to recommend changes to both rates in the new system according to the best evidence available on the pay-employment trade-off. This is particularly important given the pressure there will be to continue increasing wage rates even in economic recessions.”

In conclusion, the website Simple Politics calls this Bill “The ‘pay interns’ Bill”. I would argue that on closer inspection it is not that, but “The making work experience unaffordable Bill”. Even worse, it could be called “The denying young people opportunities Bill”. The growth in the number of unpaid internships has arisen as a consequence of the minimum wage legislation. I said earlier that I had not previously come across the term “internship”; it has arisen only since the arrival on the scene of the minimum wage, and with it has come the problem of elevating people who are doing work experience to the status of workers.

It was never the intention—the Minister actually said this, in terms—that businesses would have to pay wages to people who were not actually working, but simply experiencing the workplace. The most likely result, if the Bill became law, would be a reduction in the number of opportunities available to young people. Why? Perhaps because the law recognises that work placements do not have the same status as actual work. If an intern is actually working, it is already illegal not to pay them the national minimum wage; that is in the national minimum wage legislation, which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is enforcing. The Bill is simply unnecessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

There are so many things on which to congratulate the Chairman of Ways and Means that it would take me far too long to go through the list, so I shall refrain from doing so.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

May I offer a piece of advice to my hon. Friend, who I know is interested in making money in other ventures? Perhaps next time he would like to seek advice from the Deputy Speaker. I understand that I was one of the few people in the room when the ballot was drawn. Mr Deputy Speaker and I must be a lucky charm for that, so if my hon. Friend is looking for advice for his lottery numbers—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Being in the room has absolutely nothing to do with how the ballot is drawn. I put that on the record before anyone thinks that that is the way forward. Let us stick to the debate in hand, rather than the comments from various parts of the Chamber.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted to hear that the ballot is not a fix, but I never thought it was.

We all support the ambition of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell to see greater social mobility, and I know that that is what lies behind the Bill. That is the motivation that brings my hon. Friend to this place. The problem that I have, that some of my hon. Friends and some Opposition Members have—[Interruption.] There is only one Opposition Member in the Chamber at present, but others do exist. I know that they agree with the principle of social mobility and giving people more opportunities. The problem is that many of us think the Bill will not achieve that and will make the situation worse. I shall expand on that argument and point to what I think might be a better avenue for my hon. Friend to go down, which would genuinely create better opportunities for young people to make sure that we have more social mobility.

I yield to nobody in my demand that we have more working-class people in some of the professions. I made a speech earlier this week in Westminster Hall in which I argued for more working-class people to be in Parliament and made the point that gender diversity does not deliver social mobility, as my hon. Friend wants. I pointed out that replacing Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with Jemima in Kensington and Chelsea does not do a great deal for social mobility or diversity in this House, and that we should consider how to open up more opportunities for people from different class backgrounds. I agree with the sentiment behind the Bill, but I think it will be counterproductive.

Since I entered the House 11 years ago I have taken on so many people for work experience, as interns or whatever people want to call them or call themselves, that I could not begin to say how many have spent time in my office doing one form of work experience or another. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, I refer to it as work experience because, as far as I am concerned, that is exactly what they are getting. Whatever we call it, and whatever we call those roles, these people, from what they have said, have all had a great experience and seen the workings of Parliament first hand. They have used that experience to go on and get fantastic jobs or to help them with their studies. If this Bill had been in place, and I had had to pay some or all of those people the minimum wage, I can state quite clearly that they would not have had that opportunity. That is not because I have any objection to paying people—that is not the case at all—but because we have a budget for staffing in the House. The budget is perfectly adequate, and I make no complaint about it, but there is not a great deal spare at the end of each year. So if my hon. Friend wants these people to be paid out of that budget, the only way of doing that is to reduce the salaries of the people who already work for me, and I am not sure that that would be entirely fair on them.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Would my hon. Friend just help me with the opinions I am forming? Will he describe how long, on average, people have come to work with him for?

[Philip Davies]

I will come to that in a bit more detail, but just so that I do not look like I am dodging my hon. Friend’s question, let me say that it has varied wildly: some people come for a day, some come for a few days and some—I would imagine it is the majority—come for a week. However, some have come for months—five or six months in a couple of cases—and I will refer to them later, because part of their experience was part of what I see as the problem with the Bill.

The issue is what will be lost, and the definition in the Bill spells out what could be lost, not just in Parliament but when people are looking for jobs elsewhere. Clause 1(b) says the national minimum wage would apply where

“the purpose of the employment practice is…that the intern meets learning objectives or gains experience of working for the employer listed in section 1(a); and…to provide practical experience in an occupation or profession.”

That seems to be good old-fashioned, traditional work experience, but my hon. Friend seems to want to cover it through the minimum wage, and that would not be sensible. Learning and gaining practical experience are what is at stake. People doing work experience do it for the invaluable opportunity to gain that experience, and that is often something money cannot buy.

For many people thinking about going down a particular career route, spending even a small amount of time just seeing what happens and what the role actually means, rather than how it is portrayed in the media, is invaluable. They might actually think, “This job isn’t for me. I thought it was, because of what I thought about it, but after spending just a week here, I’ve seen what it’s really like, and it’s not for me.” The money someone can save by not pursuing a career that is no good for them is actually far more than they could ever earn by being paid the minimum wage for doing these things.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—as he invariably is, I might add.

Under the heading “What is work experience?”, the Government’s own guidance on their website about the minimum wage, work experience and internships says:

“The term ‘work experience’ generally refers to a specified period of time that an individual spends with a business—during which they have an opportunity to learn directly about working life and the working environment.”

I should say at this point that work experience has actually proven quite an essential part of the Government’s welfare reforms—reforms that Conservative Members, including, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell, are very proud of. I am sure we all recall when the Government had to introduce emergency legislation because they lost the Cait Reilly case in the courts over the work experience she was asked to do as part of her benefits regime. The Government introduced emergency legislation, the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013, which made it clear in law that people on benefits should have to do work experience in certain circumstances. Labour Members agreed to help the Government rush through that legislation because they too saw the importance of those people having to do work experience. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the shadow Minister at the time, gave Labour’s support to it. The legislation was about people doing unpaid work experience in the workplace because the Government believed, and everybody agreed, that that was one of the best ways to help them get into work. I think the Government said—I am happy for people to correct me if I am wrong—that about 50% of people on benefits who did the work experience got a job at the end of it. I would even be prepared to wager that my hon. Friend supported the Government in passing that legislation, because I am sure he appreciated how important that unpaid work experience was in people getting a job.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Perhaps controversially, I have always felt that being given benefits from the state provides an income that can be used to help to get work experience and move forward. This Bill seeks to help people who have absolutely no means of supporting themselves through the benefits system or an income outside it. That is a subtle but distinct difference.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but in making that helpful clarification he highlights one of the flaws in his Bill, because it does not make the exception that he has offered up with regard to who should be exempted from the terms of paid work experience. If he is saying that he wishes at a later date to add to his Bill another list of people who should not be part of it, then I welcome that. It is also the case that the Department of Work and Pensions introduced work experience as part of the youth contract, and that was probably one of the most popular parts of it.

I took on board my hon. Friend’s point—he made it very well—about some employers who might use internships for a purpose that some of us would not. I was struck by his example of Vivienne Westwood. However, we would be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we went down the route in this Bill.

[Philip Davies]

That is absolutely right. This is the flaw in my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell’s logic. He says that he wants to even up the playing field to make sure that poorer people get the same opportunities that richer people get and take for granted. That is a laudable aim, and nobody disagrees with it. My fear is that he will succeed in evening up the playing field, but by making sure that nobody gets the chance to do work experience and internships. That is not my idea of success.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Let me refer back to a couple of points I made in my speech. Two thirds of internships are already paid, so this Bill would not affect them. For me, the figure we must consider carefully is that 40% of people who are offered an internship cannot take it. People talk about reducing opportunities, but we are getting close to half of people being unable to take the opportunity in the first place.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

There is a self-respecting Conservative.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Quite right—I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench, who speaks from a sedentary position.

I gently say to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that he quite rightly points out that my interest is social mobility, but rather than trying to bring it down to a common denominator I am trying to bring it up to a common denominator, so that people can access opportunities for social mobility. I understand his concerns, but there is a large difference between trying to push everybody down and being under the control of one socialist fist, and trying to make sure that everybody can go as high as they possibly can.

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I absolutely agree. However, my view is that the outcome of my hon. Friend’s Bill would be to take away opportunities from people and not to add extra opportunities for them. I will make a suggestion a bit later—if I ever get the opportunity to do so, Mr Deputy Speaker—to suggest how we might actually do what my hon. Friend says, which is not to take away opportunities that exist but to make sure that there are more opportunities for other people.

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[Philip Davies]

As a well-known softie, I take a slightly different view. There is a difference between companies and organisations that are actively seeking a member of staff to come in and do some work for them, are advertising for that and in effect are trying to get somebody to do that job for nothing, and other companies. These are personal things, I guess; I think that situation is different.

I have never advertised for an unpaid intern. I have never said that I want somebody to come and work for me unpaid for x period of time. I do not think that that is right. Whether it should be illegal is a different issue, but I do not think that it is right; it is not to my taste.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is a thoroughly decent man, in stark contrast to the example I gave earlier of a certain millionaire fashionista.

[Philip Davies]

We do not hear that very often in this Chamber; I welcome that kind of intervention.

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[Philip Davies]

That is a perfectly reasonable argument to make and I do not necessarily disagree with it. As I say, the questions that we decide in this place are whether things should be legal or illegal. I am merely saying that I do not personally think it is right to advertise for a job and expect someone to work unpaid; that is not to my taste. There is a world of difference between that and someone saying, “Can I come and do some work experience with or volunteer for you? I really want to do something. Will you accommodate me?” The problem is that the Bill does not distinguish between those two approaches, which is unfortunate, because there is a massive distinction between them.

Labour Members criticised the Government’s work experience scheme for people on benefits, saying that it allowed companies such as Tesco to exploit workers and get cheap labour. However, the Government said, quite rightly, that taking somebody on work experience is not cheap labour, because, usually, the employer has to invest an awful lot of time and effort into accommodating that person. I have no complaint about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is very happy to give up his time to give people career advice and help and support. I am sure that that applies to every Member, irrespective of their party. That is what we should do, but it is wrong to say that such people are a source of slave labour. The reality is usually the other way round: it is usually the employer who makes the sacrifice in order to give people the opportunity. I fear that the Bill does not accurately reflect the nature of that relationship. It seems to think that it is a one-way street when it is anything but a one-way street.

People are already covered by the national minimum wage legislation, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. Many forms of work experience, placements and internships are covered; equally, there are some, which may be referred to as unpaid work or expenses only, where somebody gives their services free of charge. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) has made a very good point: what is wrong with the principle of somebody giving up their time free of charge because they want to contribute to a cause they believe in, or because they want to help out? Who cares whether it is for their own benefit or for altruistic purposes? If that is what they want to do, why should we have a law that says that they must not be able to do it? I really do not think that the state has any business in stopping people volunteering for causes that they believe in. That would be the only possible outcome from the Bill: it would make it virtually impossible for people to volunteer for causes in which they believe.

The hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell has mentioned data, but precise data are difficult to find. In 2010, the Government estimated that there were 70,000 interns at any one time. The most common length of an internship was recorded in a YouGov poll in 2014-15 as between four weeks and two months—that is very different from my experience of taking people on—with only 3% of internships lasting longer than a year. The same poll found that 26% of firms with an intern paid nothing or less than the national minimum wage. London Economics found that 13% to 16% of graduate interns are unpaid, but the Sutton Trust suggests that a third of them are unpaid. There is a big discrepancy between those two figures and I am not entirely sure which is right.

Many loaded statistics are used to justify a statutory requirement to make internships paid, such as those used to argue that unpaid internships are less likely to lead to a job offer, but with 47% of paid internships and 36% of unpaid internships leading to a job offer, it seems that both options are very good at enabling people to move pretty rapidly into a paid job. Surely one of the things that the Government should always be looking to do is to help people find a job as quickly as possible. It is clear from the figures that, whether it be paid or unpaid, an internship is among the most successful options in helping people find a full-time job. We should be celebrating that, not looking at how we can curtail it.

In 2010, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development did a survey of mainly large employers. It found that, among those that employ interns, 49% said that they paid interns the national minimum wage; 18% said that they did not pay interns a salary but covered their travel costs; and only 3% said that they did not pay them anything, meaning neither pay nor travel expenses.

The various options currently available for unpaid interns online show how useful such internships can be. One advert on indeed.co.uk says of its unpaid internship offer:

“Jewelstreet is the UK’s #1 designer jewellery website and has won multiple national and regional awards. We are offering a unique internship in a dynamic working environment, based in North Devon.”

I am delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) is in the Chamber. It goes on:

“Additionally over 70% of our internships have resulted in an offer of permanent employment.”

That takes us back to the point, which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby, that if the company did not advertise it, nobody would know that such an opportunity was available. It is great—surely we should celebrate this—that 70% of the people doing an internship get an offer of permanent employment at the end of it. It seems to me that we should celebrate that in this House, not make a mess of it.

CDP is offering the following:

“The internship will be at CDP’s London office and the successful candidate will have the opportunity to be involved in a range of activities within the Cities team. It will be a valuable experience for anyone seeking a career in the area of climate change, sustainability and the urban environment. The internship will run across key stages of the project, including defining the scope and structure of the outreach, communications planning, engagement and technical support”.

Again, I am sure that a lot of people who believe in the cause of climate change and want to do something about it would find such experience invaluable, either to see whether they want to pursue a career in that area or so that they can campaign on that issue in their spare time. We should welcome such opportunities, not decry them.

I am trying to go through a few points at speed, because I know that some of my colleagues wish to speak. When my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell proposed his ten-minute rule Bill in 2014, he said:

“Just last year, the National Council for the Training of Journalists found in its 2013 report that 82% of new entrants to journalism had done an internship, of which 92% were unpaid.”—[Official Report, 13 May 2014; Vol. 580, c. 593.]

I am interested in that because when I was growing up, my ambition was to be a journalist. I am delighted that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), is in her place, because I did a week’s work experience at the local paper in Stourbridge to see what it was like and to try to fulfil my ambition to become a journalist.

There is no reason on earth why I should have been paid by the local paper in Stourbridge for what I did. As it happens, I had the opportunity to write a couple of stories and visit the local court to see some cases and report on them. I clearly was not doing the job to a standard that deserved any payment. It would have been outrageous if I had been paid for my efforts, which obviously needed rewriting on many occasions before they were fit to appear in the local paper. However, it was great experience for me just to see what went on in a local newspaper office. It was also fantastic when I applied for a National Council for the Training of Journalists course—the one-year course in newspaper journalism that I did at Stradbroke College in Sheffield—to be able to point out that I had such experience. That counted very heavily in my favour when I applied for the course. It was not a great hardship that I was not paid by the newspaper for that work experience; it was actually for my benefit. It certainly was not for the benefit of the newspaper, which I suspect had to invest a great deal of time and effort in looking after me for the week, and the work certainly did not justify paying me anything.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

How old was my hon. Friend at the time?

[Philip Davies]

It was a long time ago, but I think I was 18 at the time. If anyone still at the newspaper can remember, I stand to be corrected.

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[Philip Davies]

It was not for me to pinpoint anyone in particular, and I should say for the record that the ones who are in the Chamber are among the ablest and most effective. I would not have wanted to do anything that prevented them from being here. That is not my point. My point is that, in all circumstances, people will use whatever opportunities they have to further their aims and ambitions, and we should not criticise them for that. The notion that if we pass the Bill we will end up with a system that provides equal opportunities for everyone is for the birds. That is just not going to happen. I do not think that my hon. Friend would make many inroads with this measure even if it were successful.

It is commonplace in business, and in other spheres, for people to secure opportunities such as internships and placements on the basis of who they know rather than what they know. I would like to think that the fact that we in this place are able to offer unpaid internships, work experience or whatever we want to call it to all our constituents if they ask—I certainly would never refuse a constituent, and indeed I try to accommodate as many people as I can who are not constituents—means that everyone, not just people we know, is being given an opportunity. I think that unpaid internships are extending the opportunities to more people, and I do not think that it is simply a question of giving the opportunity to someone we know or to a relative. That is why I think that my hon. Friend is attacking the problem from the wrong end.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The Clerks advised me against having a 28-day limit, but would that satisfy many of my hon. Friend’s concerns? I would be interested to hear him expand on that.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being prepared to be flexible with his Bill. We should commend him for that. I think there are areas where my hon. Friend can make the Bill better, but just making it better does not make it better than the status quo, so I cannot promise that if he were to amend it in that way it would all of a sudden command my support. I would say, however, that the Bill can be better than currently drafted, and my hon. Friend might want to explore that avenue. I am not entirely sure the Bill can be amended to make it into a good Bill, but it could be amended to make it a better Bill.

We should be clear about the rates of the minimum wage. It varies depending on people’s age. That is because we want to make sure that younger people get a fair crack of the whip; they would potentially be overlooked for someone older and more experienced if the minimum wage was the same across the board. So the Labour Government introduced a minimum wage, which has been maintained, which varies depending on age: it is £7.20 for those aged 25 and over, falling to £4 for those under 18, with different scales in between. In this context, I want my hon. Friend to bear in mind a further unintended consequence of introducing his Bill: there would clearly be an inbuilt advantage to take on younger people as interns if they have to be paid, because if they are being paid the minimum wage, they will be paid less than the cost of taking on somebody older. In this case, therefore, for the business concerned it would be a case of the younger the better. Schoolchildren would be exempt, as would students in full-time employment if it was part of their course. So this means anyone of that age could be taken on as an intern—schoolchildren could be taken on as interns for free—but for those aged 25 or over, the sum would be £7.20 an hour right away.

Somebody of 25 or over might, however, be in the greatest need of work experience, because they have clearly been finding it pretty difficult to get themselves a paid job, and they are having to do more to make themselves employable. It would be unfortunate if people in that position, who are striving to get a job and are prepared to do whatever it takes, are turned away because they have to be paid £7.20 an hour, which an employer either could not afford or was not prepared to pay. They might take on someone younger who does not have the same needs. One of the flaws of the Bill is that it is not needs-based; it does not look at who most needs these internships. Its strategy is too simple and is therefore flawed. Older people will lose out first even though they are most in need. That would need to be amended.

There is also no exemption in this Bill for participants in Government schemes or programmes to provide training, work experience or temporary work. I do not know whether that would conflict with other Government legislation. I imagine there would be another charter for making lawyers richer—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North feared—in establishing which legislation had precedence. I am not a lawyer, and those with a legal background would be better placed than me to comment, but my understanding is that usually the latest legislation trumps previous legislation.

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[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I fear that if I got sidetracked into talking about the latest decision by the High Court, we could be here for quite some time. I want to return to the issue but not today; I will save myself for another day, when I will tell the House what I really think of those judges and their ruling.

What I take from the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is that, like me, he suspects that the Bill would in effect supersede previous legislation about work experience from Government schemes. We would therefore get ourselves in a bit of muddle. We all agree—both sides of the House agree—that people on benefits doing work experience is a good thing that should be expected of them, unpaid. It helps them to get a job and we do not want to interfere with a system that works very well for lots of people who are looking for jobs. The Bill would need amending on that basis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell mentioned volunteers. If he gets the chance to wind up the debate, I hope he will deal with that issue because we have not had clarity on it. It is referred to in the explanatory notes, but they do not say a fat lot more than the Bill says, if I am honest.

The Bill is about enforcing the national minimum wage, and when the National Minimum Wage Bill was going through Parliament in 1998, the issue of volunteers was dealt with at length. The Minister at the time, Ian McCartney, said:

“I am pleased to say that the entire approach to the clause has been marked by a consensus both on our aims and on the means of achieving them. We want to ensure, first, that genuine volunteers—who give their time to good causes—are not caught up in the Bill’s provisions.”—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 23.]

The Labour Government at the time were clearly concerned about that issue, which was raised in the Bill Committee. I was not here at the time, but it appears that the Labour Government made changes as a result of concerns raised in Committee, which are the same as those raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, and they had discussions with people who were concerned.

During the debate, the then Minister said:

“We are conscious, however, that there is a grey area. The definition of ‘worker’ in clause 52”

of that Bill

“is quite wide, although no wider than the definition used for the purposes of provisions on unauthorised deductions in the Employment Rights Act 1996”.—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 24.]

It is an area of concern, and I am not entirely sure that the Bill does a great deal to clear up any confusion about that issue. It seems that the original National Minimum Wage Bill was determined to try to exclude real, genuine volunteers who were volunteering because they believed in a cause, so it would be strange if volunteer interns were now caught up in legislation that they were never really intended to be caught up in in the first place.

I might just say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Mr Speaker spoke in the debate in 1998. I mention that not because I wish to draw him into the debate now—I do not—but because I agree with the point that he made. He said:

“Are there not instances in which a person works in a charity shop, not for an honorarium but for a modest but regular payment that is below the national minimum wage, and in which, if the shop were obliged to pay that person the national minimum wage, it would have to cease to employ that person? Would not that be a most undesirable state of affairs?”—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 29.]

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Following advice on drafting the Bill, clause 1 tries implicitly to make the point that it does not apply to the charity sector, by not listing that sector among the areas that the provisions apply to. We can get into the legal ups and downs, but that is the advice that I was given on exempting the charity sector, to address the specific point that my hon. Friend has just raised.

[Philip Davies]

I can understand the point my hon. Friend makes. The Bill makes it clear what a workplace is, but clause 3 deals with exclusions, and there is no mention of the charity sector in that clause. I absolutely understand what he is saying, but I am not sure that it is abundantly clear that that sector is excluded. A stated exclusion would have been helpful to clarify this point once and for all.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The Bill’s attempt to expand opportunities seems to be all stick and no carrot. I have been looking at what happens in other parts of the world. My hon. Friend has touched on some examples of this as well. In a submission from Perspective in 2013 in favour of paid internships, Robina Longworth cited other practices from around the world. However, as far as I can see, none of the countries listed pays the minimum wage to interns. China and Hong Kong, for example, have subsidised internship programmes for university graduates and hiring companies are eligible for tax breaks and loans. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell might like to consider giving tax breaks to companies who take people on. That might be a better carrot to offer.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend will have noted my proposal to add some carrot by exempting national insurance contributions in the same way as is done with apprenticeships.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

Specifically on those points, it will not have escaped my hon. Friend’s notice that the Bill contains an exemption for people on accredited degree courses. We were willing to put that in because many accredited degree courses contain a period of internship and—this was my reason—have access to student finance. He makes a valid point about granting that access to other people on the same terms, but—this is where I would blend my Bill in—there is a question about how to sort out the time limits on such a scheme. I am listening carefully to his comments. The Bill probably will not move into Committee, which is a great pity because many important things have been said in this debate that would help to develop it.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is being typically constructive, which goes to show that his dedication is not to a piece of legislation but to getting the best possible outcome for the people he wants to help. We all recognise his passion for this, and I am happy to work with him to help deliver it.

Let us take someone who wants to work in the fashion industry or the music industry, for example. The fashion industry was mentioned earlier, so let us say the music industry. It may be that doing a degree would not help them get a foot on the ladder in the music industry; it may or may not—I do not know the industry particularly well. It may well be, however, that spending six months at a record label in London after leaving school would represent a massive head start in getting a career in the industry. It would be good if the Government offered some kind of loan to enable someone to get that opportunity. They could then pay it back when they got a decent job in the industry. That would be a way to extend opportunities to more people, whereas the Bill would restrict opportunities.

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[Philip Davies]

Certainly not a red rose. A red letter is far better than a red rose any day of the week.

As for Members of Parliament, an FOI request of IPSA asked about the number of interns and paid interns working for MPs over the past three years. It seems that about one in four MPs took on a paid intern, but I am pretty sure that virtually every MP takes on people to do work experience of some sort or another and that everybody who does so gets something out of it. Given the number of people we take on to give that opportunity to them, if we had to pay them all the minimum wage, that would take up a sizeable part of our budget. It would mean either that we could not afford to take them on or that we would have to give our existing staff a pay cut. Neither of those would be a palatable option, but they would be the only options available to us.

Strangely, the Bill does not seem to recognise that people have short-term and long-term internships. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell mentioned that issue, so I will not go into it further as he would wish to look at it. I have spent longer than I expected speaking to the Bill—[Interruption]—because of the number of interventions I have taken. In concluding, I just wish to mention a couple of people who have spent time with me. Before I go into that, I should just say that the Bill will mean we will probably end up with more people on zero-hours contracts. I know that quite a lot of Labour MPs employ people on those contracts, even though they are against them politically. [Interruption.] Does that mean zero-hours contracts are a good thing?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am conscious that my hon. Friend is drawing his remarks to a close, but what I have drawn from his comments is that he agrees with me that there must be a mechanism by which people can do these roles and be able to live, survive and do something. He has come up with interesting suggestions, but I think that he recognises the premise that we reduce social mobility if someone simply cannot afford to take up the post.

[Philip Davies]

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.

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[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. I also welcome the work done by the Government to promote fair and open access to paid internships through the graduate talent pool, the social mobility business compact, and the common best practice code for high-quality internships, which ask employers to ensure that any internships they offer are paid fairly.

Alongside offering guidance, we must continue to crack down on employers who are not treating employees fairly. I welcome the fact that this year the Government have increased HMRC’s enforcement budget by £7 million, improving its ability to crack down on employers who exploit interns and fail to pay staff properly. I declare an interest in that I used to prosecute criminals for HMRC. I wish it well in its endeavours. Employers who pay workers less than the minimum wage not only have to pay back arrears of wages at current minimum wage rates, but face financial penalties of up to £20,000 per worker. I hope that the message leaves this Chamber today that it is not worth employers trying to get round the rules, and that they must treat their employees and interns fairly.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is summing up very well a lot of what has been said. She was in the Chamber when I spoke and will have heard my comments about the model contract from the Institute of Directors, and the voluntary internships with Vivienne Westwood being advertised from 1 January 2017 based on those hours. Does my hon. Friend agree that something has to be done to tidy up this area so that all these things sit properly within the law?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that the Minister has been listening very carefully to this debate and I have no doubt that she will take away the points that you have made. If nothing else—

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for addressing those points. May I urge him to focus on the statistic that shows that 40% of people who are offered an internship have to turn it down because they cannot afford do to it? On opportunities and choice, we are getting close to a situation where half of those offered an internship cannot afford to do it. As my hon. Friend has said, internships are becoming a massive means of getting into the professional job market, so I urge him to keep that statistic in mind when he moves on address opportunity.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and I will seek to address it later in my remarks.

On social mobility, unpaid internships can be extraordinarily expensive for many of those wishing to go into the professional services, which are often located in the bigger cities and, in many cases, far away from rural constituencies such as mine. If young people in North Devon wish to undertake an internship in one of the larger cities, that will mean paying travel expenses and finding accommodation. For many—this goes to the heart of the point that my hon. Friend has just made—that is simply prohibitive. I do understand that that is a problem. If internships are accessible only to those with financial means, we will entrench a system where the professions are disproportionately dominated by those from families with higher incomes.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

That is a good argument, but the difficulty is that I am not sure that the Bill addresses it. That is my problem and my challenge to my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) makes a good point and I will address later the internships offered by the small and medium-sized enterprises that dominate my constituency and many others.

I applaud those employers that do provide funding for internships—there are some—whether it be in the form of pay or expenses. Many charitable bodies, trade associations and universities provide bursaries or similar so that those of limited means can access internships. All these schemes are essential in ensuring that, no matter their background and financial means, people who work hard and are dedicated will achieve their goals. The schemes open the door to the opportunity of an internship.

There is of course always more that can be done. I am glad that this Government are working to promote high-quality paid internships through improving codes of practice, creating awareness campaigns and, importantly, sponsoring the graduate talent pool. These will all make internship opportunities available to those from poorer backgrounds. We must remember—this goes to the heart of our discussion—that an even greater block to accessing internships for many people is a lack of contacts. Put simply, they do not know the right people. That is often a greater block than a lack of pay, so it is right that the Government have acted with initiatives such as the graduate talent pool.

As I have already hinted, my difficulty with the Bill is the level of pay that it expects the facilitator of an internship—the employer—to pay. Broadly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell has mentioned, there are two categories in the existing national minimum wage legislation: workers and apprentices. Workers provide a trade or service in return for remuneration and have an obligation to provide this work—I must sound as though I was an hon. and learned Member, which I assuredly am not—while apprentices receive a lower rate of pay, because although to a degree they provide the same services as workers, they receive on-the-job training. Consequently, the pay level for apprentices recognises that the employer invests time and resources in them, and they do not have to be paid as workers. In my view, interns are closer to the category of an apprentice, rather than that of a worker.

Internships provide individuals with experience and training, which helps them to deliver and gain employment. The Bill states that

“the intern meets learning objectives or gains experience of working for the employer”,

and that the internship provides

“practical experience in an occupation or profession.”

In my view, that is largely what an apprenticeship achieves. Workers, who receive the national minimum wage, do not set out to meet learning objectives or gain experience of working for the employer. That is almost ancillary to their role, which is to provide a service in return for their remuneration. Interns do not provide for the employer the same value as a worker, if I may put it that way, so their pay should not be the same. If I may say so to my hon. Friend, that is one of the flaws in his proposed Bill.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend will have heard the examples I have given of major multinational, multimillion-pound corporations, such as KPMG, making it very clear that everybody working in their organisation is contributing to it. It is unfair to say that interns in a business do not contribute in the same way as others, as in the case of somebody working for Vivienne Westwood.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I must apologise to my hon. Friend. I did not mean that interns do not add value; I think they add incredible value. Interns in my office have added incredible value. I was merely seeking to draw a distinction in law about the difference in status, as it were, between workers and interns or apprenticeships. Interns absolutely do add value, but I was seeking to make the point that if an intern’s circumstances mirror those of a worker, they will be covered by current employment law.

Another issue in relation to social mobility, which in my view is so important, is whether internships should exist at all. This is the heart of what I am seeking to say in this speech. My fear—fundamentally, if simplistically—is that increasing the cost of interns will inevitably mean that fewer internships are available. That is especially the case in constituencies such as mine of North Devon, where the vast majority of employers contributing to the local economy are small and medium-sized enterprises.

If those SMEs are forced to pay interns the national minimum wage, my fear is that many businesses in North Devon will simply not be able to afford to set aside that sort of money to offer internship opportunities. It is important not to choke off the opportunities available to our young people—and indeed others—and I fear that an unintended consequence of the Bill might be to do just that in areas such as North Devon where SMEs make up the vast bulk of employers and thus provide the vast bulk of opportunities for possible internships.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

For the purposes of clarification, may I assume that my hon. Friend nevertheless supports the National Minimum Wage Act 1998?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Yes, but in the context of my hon. Friend’s Bill we are discussing whether or not the national minimum wage should be applied to internships. My argument is that, if it is, there will suddenly be a contraction—a fairly major contraction—in the number of internships offered by SMEs, which make up the bulk of employers in my constituency and in many others. My point is specifically about employers’ ability to offer internships and the opportunities that will be available. We do not want to choke off opportunities. Yes, some internships are offered by big corporations and big employers who can afford the cost, but many more internships are short term—perhaps for only a few weeks or even a few days—and in small and medium-sized businesses. That will absolutely be the case in my constituency. These small businesses take on interns almost out of a sense of duty to their local community. I fear that if we mandate the extension of the national minimum wage to internships, the number of opportunities available to young people and the work experience opportunities offered to my constituents will sadly and inevitably decrease. As I say, that is an unintended consequence of the Bill.

In my view, allowance should also be made for a short internship that does not mandate any remuneration. Long-term internships are good, and there are many professions in which they happen. Short internships, though, sometimes literally of a few days, are far more numerous and are more often offered by small businesses. That is the case in my North Devon constituency, where the overwhelming majority of internships will be very short—only a few days or perhaps a couple of weeks. Very few SMEs in North Devon will have the capacity to offer a longer internship, and they would be further prevented from doing so if they were mandated to pay the national minimum wage.

Many people, particularly young people, in my constituency are offered internships because of the employer’s desire to help the individual to get on rather than to use their labour. As I say, it is almost a community scheme, and in a place such as North Devon it operates in a way that is very healthy for society and for that sort of community where we sometimes feel that we are a long way from everywhere else—albeit that we in North Devon are, I like to think, our very own small economic powerhouse.

This contrasts starkly with longer-term internships that are often found in many professions that are prevalent in big cities. Of course, if someone in my constituency wants to take up one of these internships, it will come at a greater cost, not least because of the travelling costs from North Devon to one of the big cities. I fear that the Bill does not distinguish between the short-term internships offered by small companies and the longer-term internships in large cities, where the costs for the individual will be higher, but the large corporation will be better able to pay the national minimum wage. I fear that an effect of the Bill might mean many of the short-term internships currently offered by small businesses in my constituency will not be offered in future, thus reducing the available opportunities to my constituents. That is not something I want to see, and I am sure it is not something that my hon. Friend wants to see either, but I fear that, should the Bill proceed, it might be one of the unintended consequences.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is making a case that many others have made today. It is unfortunate that, when I was drafting the Bill, the advice I was given was that the 28-day provision was unenforceable. However, if my hon. Friend were minded, by some miracle, to allow the Bill a Committee stage, I am sure he would like to join that Committee, and perhaps table amendments to meet those needs.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

That is a very kind offer, and one that is almost impossible to resist. It is possible that I shall not need to “RSVP” in about 29 minutes, but we shall see.

My hon. Friend and others have expressed a fear that there is currently some exploitation: that businesses are taking advantage of those who should be valuable work-experience interns, and using them to do as much work as many of their other employees while getting away with not paying them. It is certainly not acceptable for an employer to use an unpaid intern as just another worker carrying out the same task as others while not being paid, but I fear that my hon. Friend’s Bill will not solve that problem.

The Government have done some work in this regard. This year, for instance, they increased HMRC’s enforcement budget by £7 million. It is important for staff to be paid the appropriate amount for the work that they do, and for that payment to be properly declared. We must ensure that internships are not used as a way of circumventing national minimum wage legislation.

Reference has been made to the position of charities and voluntary organisations. Because I have a copy of the House of Commons Library’s excellent briefing, I am aware that the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 already

“provides an exception…which enables a limit range of organisations (e.g. charities) to enter contractual relations with volunteers without necessitating payment”

of the national minimum wage. That is to be applauded, because many charities and voluntary organisations in the third sector rely on the good will of volunteers to come and do the work that is so necessary in that sector. It would be entirely wrong for those excellent organisations to be mandated to pay the national minimum wage to volunteers. That could have a serious impact on their important work.

According to the House of Commons Library briefing—I think that this is a masterful example of understatement—

“This area of the law is notoriously complex.”

I fear that, sadly, the Bill may do nothing to ease that notorious complexity. I think that we need to look carefully at other ways of closing some of these loopholes if we wish to extend some of the very noble efforts that my hon. Friend has been making so far.

I applaud my hon. Friend, for the aims of his Bill are noble, but I do not think that making the national minimum wage mandatory for workplace internships is appropriate. I fear that it will have the unintended consequence that I have described: that it will have an impact on the availability of internships and the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises such as mine in North Devon to offer opportunities to young people. It is important that they are able to offer those opportunities, and that young people are able to take them up, so that we can ensure that our Government’s priority and ambition to deliver a country that works for everyone is fulfilled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for his apposite intervention. I agree that it would be most deleterious if employers were to downgrade the work experience that they offered, to get round the law. I must point out, however, that the alternative might be that employers would start to compensate the person undergoing the work experience if they were doing genuine work that added value to the firm or organisation in question.

I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made earlier that, in the early stages of work experience, the candidate is often not in a position to add value to an organisation, given that they are learning on the job. Indeed, he told the House that he had been such a candidate in his younger days, working for the best local newspaper in the country—namely, the Stourbridge News. He talked about his experience as a budding court reporter, although he was modest enough to say that his material often required a degree of rewriting before it made it into the newspaper. That underlines his point that it takes a while for interns and people on work experience to be able to add value. I hope that, at the end of his work experience week, his employers took him to one of the town’s many wonderful hostelries for a few pints on a Friday evening.

The Bill seeks to extend the provisions of the national minimum wage to cover individuals who are engaged in workplace internships. It is extremely well intentioned, but I am concerned that it could have unintended consequences that might even undermine existing employment laws and protections. Legally, the Bill is unnecessary because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North and others have said, interns are already eligible for the national minimum wage if they meet the definition of “worker”. It does not matter what the employer calls the arrangement or whether the individual has agreed not to be paid. Only the reality of the employment arrangement matters, and if an intern is a worker, they are entitled to be paid.

We have heard observations about the difficulty of defining the term “intern” in relation to various categories of unpaid work experience. The term is loosely used to apply to a wide range of formal and informal arrangements where there is an expectation of an individual receiving some kind of practical experience. A worker is someone who has a contract with their employer under which they personally perform work. For such a contract to be valid, both parties must be getting something of value from the arrangement. That could pose a problem for interns working for free if they are not getting paid but are getting something of value from the arrangement. Whether they are is not always clear cut. In most cases, however, the answer is likely to be yes. The value may be in the form of training, experience or a job in the company or organisation to which they are lending their labour.

For that reason, we feel that interns are afforded sufficient protections by existing employment laws and that a tribunal would find that an intern who was genuinely a worker would qualify for the national minimum wage. Indeed, tribunal decisions involving interns have reached that conclusion, including the case of Keri Hudson mentioned by my hon. Friend. HMRC has also identified arrears in a several cases that started out as complaints from interns. We heard some interesting remarks from my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) about the days when she was a prosecution barrister for HMRC. As she will know, HMRC follows up every complaint it receives.

I recognise that some people, interns in particular, will be worried about employment prospects if they make a complaint, but I want to make everybody aware that anyone who contacts the ACAS helpline will be treated with strict confidentiality. Anyone whose complaint is referred to HMRC directly will also be treated with absolute confidence. People can choose how much information about themselves to disclose. It is even possible for someone to raise a complaint to be followed up by HMRC without even disclosing their identity. Safeguards are in place, and I urge all MPs to make employers, employees and interns in their constituency aware of their rights and the ease with which they can raise complaints without jeopardising their employment prospects.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

What advice could my hon. Friend give to someone who is the only employee in a business?

[Margot James]

My hon. Friend points to a good exception to what I have been saying. If someone is the only employee in a business, it would be a microbusiness. I would imagine that most people who become an employer’s only employee are family or friends. I accept that such a case could exist and what I said would not apply in those circumstances, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that such circumstances are exceptional. I can accept that there will be circumstances in which people will fear being exposed even if their confidentiality is maintained, so I accept my hon. Friend’s wider point.

If the Bill does proceed to Committee, I ask my hon. Friend to assure the House that it will not have a negative impact on the excellent support offered to disadvantaged young people by organisations and groups such as the Social Mobility Foundation. Short-term work placements, which may go beyond the 28 days mentioned earlier, offer risky and ultimately untenable situations for employers, establishing legal obligations towards participants that none of the parties involved either intended or wished for. I fear that my hon. Friend could not offer that guarantee, as indeed the Government could not were they to introduce something with the broad definition contained in the Bill.

We have heard that unpaid internships are disproportionately filled by people from affluent backgrounds, and I do not dismiss that concern in any way. Indeed, the examples I gave the House earlier about Susan and Jack underline that if we seek to legislate too readily and expand the scope of existing protections too freely, we may end up legislating some existing opportunities out of existence, because employers will not want the risk or nuisance of offering them and putting themselves into an exposed position that their conduct does not really deserve. If there are fewer internship placements as a result of the Bill, will we really have addressed the social mobility problem that lies behind it? I do not think so, and I sense that a number of my colleagues, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, would agree with me.

A better approach will be to take the opportunity afforded to us by the recently announced Taylor review to look carefully at modern employment practices and to gather evidence to see how we might best direct our efforts to improve fairness of opportunities and consideration for all entrants to the labour market, regardless of their background and whether they have the means to support themselves through unpaid work of any description. As a result of the Bill, I intend to ask Matthew Taylor to look at these questions with respect to interns, and I hope to persuade my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell to lend his considerable experience and credibility to any discussions he may be invited to have by Mr Taylor and the panel members who will assist him in this valuable work, the fruits of which I look forward to seeing.

As the Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions, the Government firmly believe in creating an economy that works for all. We support enterprise but not at the expense of employment rights, wages or job security when job security is desired. Where interns are genuinely workers, they are entitled to all the same rights and protections as any other worker, including, importantly, being eligible for the national minimum wage if they are under 25 and the national living wage if they are over 25.

I take my hon. Friend’s point that, even though the law is clear on that matter, it is governing a great range of grey areas in terms of the nature of the work that people who are starting out on their careers are performing and whether or not they are work shadowing, gaining work experience or undertaking an internship, paid or otherwise. Those are not just grey areas; I would go so far as to call them a minefield for employers.

I wish to protect the vast majority of employers who have a good disposition. I have been one myself, and I know that several contributors to this debate are former business managers who employed people. Indeed, we are all employers in this House, are we not—even your good self, Madam Deputy Speaker? I hope that I may compliment you by saying that, knowing some of your staff as I do, I know that you are an exemplary employer. Those standards go for the vast majority of Members across this House, and the vast majority of employers outside it are very good employers. Unfortunately, a minority are not, and we have heard some scandalous examples today of employers who are using the internships system to get free labour.

Appalling situations have been cited by a number of colleagues from across the House. Those examples are most regrettable and they underline the need that my hon. Friend has identified for us to act in this area, which is what I hope the Matthew Taylor inquiry will do. It will examine this minefield and clarify the conditions, so that we can ensure that interns, and employers’ good intentions, are protected and that all young people can get good experience without their employers falling foul of the law.