Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

Lord Winston Excerpts

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

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on his altruism, the way that he has produced this Bill and the sentiments behind it. I will yet again violently disagree with my noble friend Lord Mitchell—I am always having arguments with him, as I will on this occasion as well. I am surprised to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, on getting to the kernel of this matter. I completely agree with her. The Bill is of course extremely well-meaning but it has deep flaws and, as it stands, would prevent the very things which the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, would like to promote. The real issue is that it would discriminate against the people he wants to promote.

My father died when I was nine and my mother was left destitute. I realised only recently, reading some of the things she wrote when I was a teenager, just how poor she was and how she managed. I went to do my first work experience—unpaid, of course— when I was just of school leaving age. As it turned out, I worked as an assistant caretaker in a girls’ school, clearing the gym. It was a very exciting experience for me and it might well have shaped my subsequent career—I am not certain. Thereafter, I spent a couple of months in a radio factory playing around with electronics. Those two jobs focused two aspects of my career. They made me understand, for example, what it was to be in a work environment, and talking to the man lagging the pipes in the basement of that school made me understand the issues associated with industrial diseases, which turned out to be quite important during my medical career.

To be serious for a moment, there are many types of employment in this country for which work experience is extremely difficult to get. For example, the National Health Service is a disgrace in this aspect. It is very difficult for young people to do any kind of useful work experience in the health service but unless they do, they cannot then apply for a course—whether that be in nursing, medicine or any of the other caring professions—at university. In fact, I had a letter this week from a 19-year-old who wants me to help her with her work experience but as I am not now employed by the health service, I know it is appallingly difficult for me to help her get any kind of experience in a hospital. It is important for the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to understand that if we pass the Bill, working for a month as a hospital porter or any kind of really trivial job in the health service will probably be insufficient for most people. That really needs to be looked at in this circumstance.

I want to mention my middle son, Joel. When he was just at school leaving age, my lab was having great difficulty with a piece of analysing equipment the purpose of which was to understand various proteins and sugars. None of us scientists in the lab could get the damn thing to work, even though we had spent some hundreds of thousands of pounds on it, and because it was out of warranty we just left it on the shelf. Joel came in, looked at the machine and, having worked with the scientists for about a month, suddenly found himself quite useful. He took it apart, fiddled with it and, using his electronics expertise, after about six weeks he got the thing working so well that he ended up being named on the paper when the work was published. It would never have been published otherwise and it was his first scientific publication. I do not doubt that that achievement helped at his interview when he went to Cambridge, as he was obviously able to talk about how he could work in a laboratory profitably.

One very common problem in science is that people who come into a laboratory for just four weeks are not only useless but dangerous. They can make your work more difficult and destroy things. It takes a lot of experience. At the moment, I have a place for somebody who I would love to see as a research assistant but I know that for the project I am involved with, it would take a minimum of two months’ intensive training before we could find somebody suitable. That will of course cost us quite a lot of money and time. Thereafter, one might well be able to pay such a person, but that is important.

Finally, I will mention one thing which is close to my heart at the moment. Just this week, I am applying for some intellectual property which we think we will exploit. With some luck, I believe we may revolutionise one aspect of reproductive medicine. One of my junior colleagues who works with me at the Genesis Research Trust at Hammersmith Hospital is largely involved with this work. She came to me as an undergraduate student, while doing a scientific degree in another university, and said, “I think I’ve made a mistake. I really would like to work in a research laboratory. Could you accommodate me during my holiday?”. She worked throughout her entire holiday, for two months in the summer and again over Christmas. She was of course unpaid but she became extraordinarily good at that work. At the end of her time, she said, “I’ve been looking at what you do and I want to apply for medicine”. She did not come from a privileged background; it took a long time for her to get into medical school. Eventually, having qualified in medicine, she got a particularly good degree and in the same year, remarkably, having got that she applied for membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and of the Royal College of Physicians. She got both those extremely difficult exams in the same year and has now completed her PhD doctorate.

This young scientist now has the most promising career ahead of her, which would not have been possible had she not had that long-term contact in the lab. Eventually, of course, we found work for her and she was paid, but there was no possibility at all that she would have been taken on under the rules of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, must understand that if we put the Bill in place as it stands, it will be more difficult for people to come into the health service or into highly technical jobs to get the kind of training and experience which is necessary to progress their career. That is a very damaging aspect of the Bill, and I wait to see how we can amend it as it goes through the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

I thank all noble Lords for taking part in the debate and for their support for the Bill. It is invidious to mention any particular noble Lords, but I will briefly pick up on a number of points that were made, if I may.

First, I agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Flight about start points. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, my start point was zero weeks. Having four weeks in the Bill does not stop the clock ticking from day one, but it helps to define the period between what is and what is not work experience. I would certainly be happy to have more discussions on that point.

I am sad that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, does not like the Bill—I still like his television programmes. Perhaps I can help him out on one point—I hope so. He mentioned tidying up the ladies’ gym. I see no difficulty under the legislation—it is quite clear in that example that he was not a worker but a volunteer.

I was surprised by the noble Lord’s speech because I felt that many of his arguments actually made the case for the Bill. It is fine and a lovely thing to be able to help your children, but while Joel is in the lab working away and doing great things, what about Jack, or indeed Jane, from South Shields, who are able to watch the noble Lord on television but have very little opportunity to break through that glass screen? Without wanting to trespass on family issues, I say to Joel Winston that, having seen hundreds of thousands of pounds put into not fixing that piece of equipment, as the noble Lord set out, if I were him I would feel at least a little aggrieved to not receive any remuneration when undertaking tasks that were not only work but were clearly beneficial to the lab to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

[Lord Winston]

I mentioned Joel only as a bit of a joke. If the noble Lord looks at my record in my laboratory he will see that we have helped endless numbers of young people with work experience. Wherever possible we have tried to promote them thereafter, as we did with the last person I talked about, who would probably not have got into medical school and would certainly not now be a stellar performer in science. Their PhD was also supported through our charitable work. To be fair, I mentioned my privileged son only because of the underprivileged people we regularly see and want to help. I am not totally against the noble Lord’s Bill—of course I am not—but I want to see it adjusted in Committee to ensure that we do not prevent people properly accessing work experience.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

I thank the noble Lord and I accept his point. I look forward to discussing those points as we get to further stages. The intention is absolutely to have work experience opportunities—internships if they go on longer—not only paid but available to the broadest breadth of talent across the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, raised a very interesting point. It is certainly one to discuss further as we progress. There is a potential danger in identifying any particular group of people and seeking to differentiate them. As he rightly and sensitively set out, it is clearly a difficult issue, but to differentiate too significantly could be problematic and may have at least the echoes of arguments made in previous decades on gender pay.

This has been a fantastic debate. I am clearly absolutely behind the principle. I am not totally, 100%, die-in-a-ditch committed to every last dot, cross, “i” and “t” in the Bill. As I said to the Minister at the outset: if not this Bill, what Bill? My mission is quite simply this: current legislation is clear and clearly is not working. I hope that the Bill is not a Rubiconic leap, a lunge or a blast into space, but merely a focused, targeted, thought-through tweak to existing legislation to bring clarity and to bring people within the law to enable them to have their rights and to be paid for the work they undertake.

Unpaid internships are a stain on our society, a drain on social mobility and desperately Dickensian. They are something of the past that I believe should be firmly committed to that past. We have the opportunity today to take the next step towards condemning unpaid internships to that past. In thanking all noble Lords who have contributed once again, I ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.