Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I refer your Lordships to my entry in the register of interests. I am a board member of Impellam Group, a staffing and recruitment company. First, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holmes, not just on introducing the Bill but on the way in which he began the debate. He made a very powerful speech.

A few months ago, I went to see a young theatre production at the Almeida, called “Bait”. It was put on by young people and about young people’s lives. The big message I took away from that production was that young people feel they are being lied to. It was quite shocking, but when you start to hear more about how they are treated in the world of work, then I do not think we should be surprised at all.

In preparing for my contribution, I spoke to a young man in his 20s. I have known him since he was born; I know his mother very well, and over the last two or three years, she has told me of his experiences in trying to find permanent work. I thought I would speak to him directly and learn more about the issue. Fortunately, he lives in north-east London, so has access to some of the great opportunities here, but does not come from a privileged background. If I say he spent his early life living with his mum in a bedsit with no central heating, you get the picture. He is a very creative and talented young man. When he talks about some of his experiences at proper, well-organised work experience placements, it all sounds pretty good, as though the placements were well designed. There were no problems. However, even in big corporates, when he has been with them for a week or two and they have promised to pay his travel and lunch expenses, after the event, they are not very forthcoming in paying that money. For some reason, when it is just £75 it takes a long time to materialise, if at all. Somebody like him does not feel well equipped to pursue that matter.

For the last three years he has been trying to get a permanent job. What he told me about that I found most concerning was things called work placements. These are the kinds of arrangements where firms will say, “Come and work for us, get some work experience and there might be a job in it for you at the end of a few weeks”. When I talked to him I asked him to send me some examples to illustrate the experience he has had. I will share with your Lordships some things he sent me. This is him speaking:

“A number of placements kept reassuring me that I would be paid after one month … but once the month was up I was given excuses as to why I had not been paid yet. You hope that by working for a month you will impress your employer and that you will start to be paid (this isn’t always the case)”.


Another example was:

“One office job promised me a full time role with pay and kept hinting that a certain position was available to me. I went to the office one day and was told I was being let go for no specific reason and was thanked for my work”.


He also said:

“Another placement hired me for nearly 3 months. I had worked overtime for them, including evenings, weekends and extra days. One day they stopped all communication with me. After some time had passed I contacted them as things had gone quiet and I wanted to know about future work. They never replied to me at all (no phone call, text or email) this was a production company and this is usually the norm of behaviour when it comes to communicating”,


by the employer. He also said:

“I was also let down before a job had started with one particular company. I was promised an induction day followed by a week’s trial and training as an office receptionist. As the employer did not stay in regular contact, I emailed them the day before the induction was to begin to confirm the date and I was given a reply stating that the position had been filled. (If I hadn’t of contacted the company I would have turned up to my induction completely unaware of this).


Unfortunately when it comes to internships and pay nothing is ever given to you in writing. Most employers will only make verbal promises about paid work.


Most of my internships have been very frustrating, especially when you work hard and you prove yourself time and time again by demonstrating your passion, work ethic and commitment, but to no avail”.


I do not know about your Lordships, but I would find it hard to keep going if that was the way I was being treated time and again. I said to him, “Why do you keep going?” He said, “Well, I don’t really have much choice. You hope one day this will be the one so you keep going”. Our young people are being exploited and it is just not good enough.

That is just one person’s experience. He told me that his friends who are also trying to get into various different working environments and sectors have experienced the same thing. His experience is not unique. I do not know whether my noble friend’s Bill is the right solution to this problem. I will listen very carefully to my noble friend the Minister, but I do know that the current legal and regulatory regime is not working. Young people feel powerless. Because of that, our young people are being exploited. That has to stop.

I have one final point. Yesterday we debated intergenerational fairness. I made the point that one thing that unites older generations and the very young is their shared desire for honesty and clarity—from talking to my young friend I learned that you can understand why. One of the points he made repeatedly to me about his experiences was that the person he was usually dealing with when trying to get work was in their 30s or early 40s. He felt they had a very different attitude from his and the sort expressed by his parents and his teachers. We have to bear in mind that the generation that came before the one that is now trying to get work entered the workplace at a boom time in the economy. Our current youngsters are trying to get work in much tougher situations. The intergenerational gap of knowledge and appreciation is quite stark between this generation and the one just ahead of them, yet the one ahead of them is in control of giving them work. That is another thing that is not necessarily for my noble friend to respond to today, but it is something for us to reflect on when we think about wider issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We are not taking a view on that. We are saying that there is no definition of work experience and it is left for others to decide whether the work is proper work that deserves remuneration or whether it comes under the description of somebody coming in for a couple of days and looking over somebody’s shoulder.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I wonder if I might assist my noble friend. One of the things I find quite helpful, from what he said in his remarks, is knowing that the Government are still considering how they will respond to Matthew Taylor’s report. I did not realise that until my noble friend said so. We have clearly had a very good debate, with some strong and forceful arguments. I would have thought quite a few of us would welcome the opportunity to sit down with the relevant Ministers—perhaps in BEIS—who are looking at and considering how to respond to the Taylor review, and have some real influence on the Government’s response to that set of recommendations.