Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) (No. 2) Bill

Dehenna Davison Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 11th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham]

Indeed, that is very much the case. I shall develop my argument as I go and I will cover many of the points that my hon. Friend has actually mentioned. She might be interested to know that I had an email overnight from a father who told me that, during Fashion Week, young people actually pay the fashion houses to get the experience of working with them at that time—so we are talking about not unpaid work, but paying for the privilege to have that experience.

Perhaps the Government should consider what additional action they need to take to encourage businesses to continue to offer more properly paid roles for those entering the job market, otherwise it will be the already wealthy and well-connected who continue to have that elite access to jobs and experience while their less affluent counterparts struggle with a lack of those connections. In any event, as my hon. Friend said, they cannot afford to do the work for nothing.

[Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman and those on the Conservative Benches will welcome the Government’s intervention on the kickstart scheme, which offers paid placements—paid jobs—for people right across our country to try to stop young people from going into long-term unemployment. I hope he will welcome that.

[Alex Cunningham]

I most certainly do welcome it, but, sadly, it has got off to such a chaotic start that I really worry about how those job creations will actually happen. Yes, let us make it happen, but the Government need to look very carefully at the very poor start that we have made with that particular programme.,

I am pleased to put forward this Bill to tackle one area of employment that can be exploitative and unjust. This Bill seeks to ban unpaid work experience that lasts more than four weeks. Before I continue, let me thank those who have helped me get this far with the Bill: the Sutton Trust for its insight and support in providing me with the guidance and information that I needed to confidently bring this Bill forward; the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) for having brought an almost identical Bill to the Commons during an earlier Session: and, finally, the Conservative Lord Holmes, who currently has a parallel version of this Bill laid in the other place. Much work has been done on this issue in the past, and I am grateful for the support and perseverance of those who have been long-term campaigners for this cause.

We often hear today, from young people in particular, of those applying for jobs being told that they do not have enough experience, yet the opportunities to get that experience are often closed off. Jobs are either unadvertised, given to friends of the organisation, or somebody who knows somebody else’s dad, or advertised as unpaid roles, which means that only those with existing wealth to pay for the cost of living can apply.