National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill
Debate between Mark Pawsey and Philip Davies(8 years ago)
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Philip Davies
Of course my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a point that I, too, have considered during this debate, because my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell made a point about how expensive it is to live in London and to take accommodation in London, which is absolutely right. Many opportunities for internships and work experience are in London, so I have to say to him that paying under-18s £4 an hour—the current rate of the minimum wage for under-18s—will not give them the opportunity to come and take up a work experience place in London; they would still have to rely on parental support, other family support, or other means.
The Bill will not make a blind bit of difference to the people my hon. Friend is targeting. They still will not be able to afford to take up opportunities in London, which will still be the preserve of more affluent people. Again, that is why the Bill will not achieve what he sets out to achieve and why I think I have a better solution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) was right: many people doing work experience are already entitled to the national minimum wage. We should make that point clear. I made it earlier in an intervention, but I see a difference between people who are—[Interruption.] I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) does not agree with me here; he is a bit more hard-core than I am.
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.
Philip Davies
We do not hear that very often in this Chamber; I welcome that kind of intervention.
Mark Pawsey
I was going to make a distinction. It is known that MPs provide internships, so there would often be no need for my hon. Friend to advertise his own internship. However, if other businesses were minded to take on a young person and provide them with experience in that way, they would need to provide some mechanism to do so, and placing an advertisement would seem to me the obvious thing to do.
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.
Rugby World Cup Legacy
Debate between Mark Pawsey and Philip Davies
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Six days ago we watched the final game of the rugby world cup 2015, and a fantastic match at Twickenham stadium between New Zealand and Australia. At one stage it looked as if the All Blacks might run away with it, but the Wallabies staged a magnificent comeback to close the gap. At the end the New Zealand team, with kicks from Dan Carter, were the worthy winners of the Webb Ellis cup. While memories of that match and the entire tournament are fresh in our minds, I wanted to reflect on that from the perspective of the country as a whole, and particularly of my constituency with its unique association with the game, and consider the tournament’s impact on the game of rugby union.
The tournament touched all parts of the UK, and almost 2.5 million tickets were sold for matches up and down the country, from Twickenham in the south-east, to Cardiff in Wales, Manchester and Newcastle in the north, and Exeter in the south-west. Across 11 host cities, record numbers turned out to experience the thrill of the rugby tournament. Members whose constituency played host to a world cup match or a fanzone will know the buzz, and city centres and venues came alive, benefiting pubs in particular—reports already show uplifts in the profits of different pub chains of between 6% and 33%. More than 1 million people visited the official fanzones, and it is predicted that the tournament will have contributed almost £1 million to the UK economy, with overseas visitors alone having injected £869 million of revenue into the UK. The Office for National Statistics charted a 1.9% rise in retail sales last month.
Rugby enthusiasm was widespread, and more than 100,000 of the tickets sold were child tickets for aspiring fans who were watching the game for the first time. It is one thing for a tournament to sell tickets to rugby enthusiasts such as me, but it is something else when a broader group of people are touched.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for everything he does to support rugby union. He mentioned places that hosted world cup matches. Does he recognise that my constituency hosted the mixed ability rugby world cup this year, which was held in the same year as the rugby world cup? Does he agree that that was a great success and a great way of getting more people to play rugby? We should look to replicate that in future years.
Mark Pawsey
My hon. Friend is right, and there are many versions of the game such as “golden oldies” for older players, tag for younger players, and mixed ability rugby is another game coming forward.
This country had 460,000 visitors, and I am confident that they will go back to their home countries and speak with high regard for the spirit that the game of rugby engenders. That spirit was shown remarkably through the efforts of the world cup volunteers—6,000 people formed the pack who directed fans from train stations and entertained them at fanzones. Their enthusiasm helped to build the celebration. Between them, the 23,000 volunteers covered 240,000 volunteering hours. Quite simply, the tournament could not have taken place without them.
People engaged with the world cup away from the stadiums in different ways. The final was watched by an estimated world audience of 120 million. In the UK, 11.6 million viewers tuned in to the game on ITV, the largest rugby audience and the highest peak audience for a sporting event since the 2014 soccer world cup.
It was not just a rugby tournament. As my hon. Friend said, the festival of rugby encouraged rugby events—not just games—of all shapes and sizes. In my constituency, on the theme of “Rugby’s got balls”, rugby sculptures were on display, supported by Rugby Borough Council. As part of the festival, we had the parliamentary rugby world cup, a tournament for MPs. Seven nations participated. Once again, Australia walked away with the cup. I pay tribute to the many Members of the House who got their boots and shorts on, and to the sponsors, who enabled us to have such a successful tournament very much in the spirit of the game.
The Rugby Football Union has announced the financial success of the tournament. Some £250 million was raised from ticket revenues, with an £80 million surplus. That money is already finding its way down to the grassroots game. It was the most digitally engaged tournament ever, with social media activity throughout the tournament. The #rwc2015 hashtag was used twice a second and the official world cup app was downloaded 2.8 million times in 204 countries.
The tournament will be long standing in the memory of my constituents in Rugby, where we have a long association with game—it goes back to 1823, when a young man called William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran during a game of football being played on the Close at Rugby school. He was a Rugby lad, and broke the rules to create the characteristic feature of a game that was taken around the world by former pupils of Rugby school. With the town giving its name to the school and the school giving its name to the game, my constituency has long called itself the home of the game. There is a little bit of an argument against that view—some say that the home is where the administrators are based, which, as far as the English game is concerned, is Twickenham—but it is indisputable that my constituency is the birthplace of the game.
In recent years, we have not done as much as we might have done to celebrate that. In my maiden speech shortly after my election in 2010, I spoke about my wish, as a former rugby player and an enthusiast for the game, to improve the connections between the town of Rugby and the game of rugby. It was clear that the big opportunity would come during the rugby world cup 2015. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, a number of people—councillors, council leaders and town centre traders who were alert to the commercial opportunities—got together to plan what the town might do during the world cup. Shortly after my election, people were coming up to me and asking, “Mark, what are we going to be doing in Rugby for the rugby world cup?”
We went out and made relationships, and secured equal status to host cities. Rugby was a host city—it was the only host city without any games—and hosted a fanzone for the longest period throughout the tournament. It ran from well before the opening ceremony. Only today, I attended the very last event in the tournament—a conference held by Coventry and Warwickshire chamber of commerce—before the semi-permanent structure is taken down. The contractors turn up tomorrow.
Why did Rugby do that? We wanted to increase the numbers of people coming to our town and benefit the businesses within the borough. We wanted to provide something for local residents and promote civic pride. Rugby is one of the fastest-growing towns in England and we wanted to enhance national and international awareness with a view to attracting longer-term investment into the town.
As I mentioned, we did that by making the fanzone and the rugby village the focus of activities throughout the eight weeks. Not only could people watch the matches on big screens, but there was art, culture and entertainment to appeal to the community as a whole. Some of the best events I attended in the fanzone did not involve watching the matches. We had a fantastic one-man play about the life of Ray Gravell, a famous Welsh rugby player; only the other day, we heard a rugby-based electric string orchestra play; and we had a fascinating talk on the history of the game and how it transmitted itself around the world. People are saying to me, “What are we going to do now our fanzone has gone? What are we going to do now the world cup is over?”
Some 40,000 people visited the fanzone, of whom 25,000 came to watch the matches. Alongside that, we arranged a schools programme attended by 3,000 children from 50 schools across the constituency. Local rugby clubs are benefiting from that now, through a substantial and sustained increase in the number of inquiries from young players.
We have put rugby on the map. It enjoyed national and international promotion as a result of the efforts, help and support of Visit England and England Rugby. I am sure that anybody who watched the opening ceremony will remember the television footage moving across the town to land on Rugby school, where a re-enactment of the opening game took place. All of that gave our town a massive profile.
We have established strong links with external organisations, including World Rugby and the RFU. Over the last few weeks, we have welcomed four delegations from Japan, where the 2019 tournament will be held, and we are building up relationships there. While it is early days to report figures from local businesses, I have spoken to one local trader who told me that his trade during the tournament was up by as much as 250%.
In addition to the pack that England 2015 put together, Rugby as a town put together its own group of 100 volunteers who welcomed visitors, assisted with the delivery of the programme and signposted for our many visitors. Just as when someone visits someone’s home they try to smarten up the place beforehand, Rugby made a series of improvements and investments before the tournament, including improved street furniture and better coach parking, and I think we are one of the first towns in the midlands to have free wi-fi across the town. So we are confident we have met our objectives of increasing visitor numbers and spend and providing facilities for local people. I take my hat off to Rugby Borough Council—the council leadership and council officers—for delivering something special for the town. As I said, people are stopping me in the street and telling me what a wonderful job we did in welcoming people to Rugby throughout the world cup.
When we put on tournaments such as the rugby world cup it is important to increase participation in sport, and that was a big objective of the RFU, which has already committed £25 million from the profits generated during the tournament to ensure a meaningful legacy. That money will go into new facilities. Some £10 million has already been committed to investment up to 2017 so that those who play the game have a quality experience with modern facilities—I often played the game in scruffy and tatty conditions. In my own county of Warwickshire, £350,000 is being invested across 18 projects. It is also important that we get the right level of coaching and refereeing. Across the country, the RFU has invested £1 million in new coaches and referees. People volunteered for those very important roles at fanzones across the country.
We have spoken about the importance of getting more youngsters playing the game. It is important that if someone visits a stadium and watches a game or sees something they enjoy on television, they are made welcome by clubs if they then choose to play. One way of doing that is to introduce rugby in more state schools, and that is happening. Some 400 state schools are getting involved with the RFU’s flagship three-year “All Schools” programme, which is training teachers and older students to deliver rugby by linking with local clubs. In my constituency, three of our secondary schools, Bilton, Avon Valley and Harris, have linked with their local clubs, Newbold-on-Avon, the Old Laurentians and Rugby St Andrews, with after-school sessions taking place at the clubs. The RFU has an objective to introduce rugby to more schools—from the current 400 state schools to 750 of them.
One of the game’s problems happens when people play in their younger years, but then get lost to the game as other attractions, often including girlfriends, come along. There is a real effort going on to bring back people lost to the game in the 16 to 24-year-old age group. In my constituency, Newbold-on-Avon rugby club has been involved in a targeted delivery to bring back some of those players.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) referred to other versions of the game. Touch rugby, for example, can be played by older players, and there is a relatively new version of the game known as “walking rugby”, which enables people of even more senior years to continue to enjoy the excitement of handling the ball and playing as part of a team. Some 261 touch centres have been set up at 147 clubs, 75 colleges and 39 universities.
Another key objective has been to extend the game around the world. One feature of the 2015 world cup was how the second tier nations—those that have been playing the game for a shorter time—have raised their standards, so that the gap between them and tier 1 has become much narrower. We did not have games with results such as 100 points against nil; we had some pretty exciting games, and none more so than the Japanese game against the South Africans in the early part of tournament when a tier 2 team really gave a fright to the mighty South Africans. That engendered a great deal of interest in the game. Georgia and Romania are part of a project to get more people playing, and seventeen European countries are working together to address the challenges to increasing participation. There is also the legacy oversight group whereby members from the worlds of business, sport and government come together to spearhead progress and identify further opportunities.
We had a great tournament this year, and the rugby world cup 2015 had a massive impact, boosting our economy, increasing the perception in the world of my town and furthering engagement with the game. We were very pleased in Rugby to welcome the visitors and place our town and my constituency in the best possible light. The RFU is taking the opportunity to leave a positive legacy for English rugby for future generations to enjoy. Now that the tournament has concluded, it is time to turn our sights on 2019. We look forward with great interest to what Japan holds in store for us in 2019.
Empty Property Rates (SMEs)
Debate between Mark Pawsey and Philip Davies(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Does the hon. Gentleman have permission from both the Member who secured the debate and the Minister to speak?
Mark Pawsey
Mr Davies, I have spoken to my hon. Friend who secured the debate, but not the Minister. Could I have two minutes to speak?
Philip Davies (in the Chair)
You can speak very briefly, because we want to hear the Minister’s response to the debate.
Commercial Property
Debate between Mark Pawsey and Philip DaviesWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
I discussed the repercussions of the change with the previous Government on many occasions. I think that the level is £18,000 now, but in Solihull one cannot rent a broom cupboard for rates of £18,000 a year, as I know to my cost. I criticise the previous Government tremendously for the repercussions. I have constituents in Birmingham who are trying to rent out property for £1 a square foot just to absolve themselves of their problems with the rates. Will my hon. Friend exhort the Minister to consider whether, in this current economic climate, some form of marginal relief might be possible, just for the time being?
Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Order. I remind Members that interventions, particularly in a half-hour debate, should be as short as possible.
Mark Pawsey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her contribution. I know that even in areas where rents have been reduced to the level that she mentioned, there are still no takers. If no businesses are willing to take the premises, the price is irrelevant. We know that the situation must change.
The regulations have been in force for more than two years and have had a number of effects, some of which the property industry expected and warned the Government about at the time of the change. On the failure to provide services, it can be argued in the interest of fairness that business rates are a tax on occupation with the intention of raising funds, in the same way as the council tax. However, clearly, if a property is not occupied, no services are being consumed, and it follows quite reasonably that no tax should be payable.
In many cases, the tax has become a tax on ownership rather than a tax on an income stream. Taxes are usually based on income streams, which means that they can be paid from profits earned. Again, where a commercial property is vacant, there is no income stream on which that tax can be levied.