Unpaid Internships

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to enforce minimum wage legislation to end the practice of unpaid internships, and whether they have considered any legislative change.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, existing legislation already prohibits the practice of using unpaid interns as workers, and therefore we believe that further legislation is not necessary. What is needed is for employers to play their part by being good employers and making sure that they pay at least the national minimum wage for all interns from day one.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, in the light of low rates of reporting, lower rates of investigation and a near absence of prosecutions, does my noble friend not agree that it is time to deploy all of HMRC’s powers and to introduce legislative reform to put an end to the pernicious practice of unpaid internships once and for all?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

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