Tag Archives: donal macintyre

Helen Duffett

Interning for MPs: exploitation or experience?

By Helen Duffett | Fri 13th November 2009 - 5:24 pm

Donal MacIntyre and Hannah Barnes have reported on MPs’ interns for BBC Radio 5 live:

MPs could be breaking the law by not paying their parliamentary interns. Hundreds of young graduates are putting in thousands of hours of unpaid work at Westminster. This practice is excluding many young people without independent financial support from a route that many see as the first step on the ladder to a political career. But, this is not just a question of pushing the bounds of fairness. Minimum wage regulations require that some of these interns should be paid.”

You can listen to the podcast of last Sunday’s show “Parliament’s unpaid workers” here.

Among Liberal Democrat MPs, practices vary: Phil Willis and Alistair Carmichael pay their interns the national minimum wage while others pay only travel and lunch expenses.

I spoke to Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, who puts his interns on a contract as part-time researchers:

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 22 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Peter Davies
    "The Greens’ major objective is to preserve the planet as a liveable space for humanity." I'm not convinced that is still in their top three....
  • Peter Wrigley
    I think it helps to look at the parties in terms of their major objective, or usp if you prefer. The Liberal Democrats' major objective is to preserve, prote...
  • James Hill
    @David Allen There is 0% chance that the result of the next election is a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. And the tax cut proposed by Ed has also been proposed by the t...
  • James Hill
    @Rob Heale The problem with VAT, is generally when rates are lowered, the savings are not passed on to consumers and instead pad out profit margins. This has me...
  • James Hill
    @Peter Davies I agree, I think higher rates of pension credit should be looked at – would be a much more effective, targeted and cheaper way to reduce pension...