Member News
By Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall - 30th November 2011
Lord Lucas wants interns to be paid the money they are missing out on from not being able to claim Job Seekers' Allowance.
I am very much in favour of internships. Members of my family have benefited from being interns, as I have from having interns. But I want internships to be accessible to all, and not just those who can afford to be unpaid.
Internships are good for interns. They get experience that they could never get any other way, giving them a better understanding of their own objectives and making them more employable.
Internships are good for their employers. You get marginal work done at a marginal cost, a real close look at potential employees (which makes it much easier to take on extra staff in hard times), and a warm glow from helping a kid onto the ladder.
Internships are good for the country. Small employers, and disorganised ones like the House of Lords, cannot handle apprenticeships. But internships, even within the constraints of BIS's Common Best Practice Code for High-Quality Internships, suit them just fine. The Lords would work better, and be less vulnerable to lobbyists, if most of us had interns.
With a million young unemployed, we all ought to be looking at how we can take on an intern.
But internships should be open to all, not just those with parents who can afford them not to be earning. And you cannot do internships and claim Job Support Allowance (JSA): you get classified as unavailable for work.
So I suggest that employers should have to pay interns the JSA they are missing out on. That way, the poor lose nothing by becoming an intern. I don't think employers would shy away from this level of pay, and anyway a job that is not worth paying JSA for, is a job that an intern will learn nothing useful from.
Ralph Palmeris a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He is a hereditary peer, entering the House of Lords in 1991, and sits on the Conservative benches.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd