Unpaid internships costing over £1,000 a month in London

The cost of an unpaid internship in London now reaches over £1,000 a month, according to new research by the Sutton Trust.

The social mobility charity found that an unpaid internship in London holds a minimum monthly price of £1,019, meaning a six-month internship costs £6,114. Unpaid internships do not fare much better in the North. The study has found that a six-month unpaid placement would cost just shy of £5,000.

According to the Sutton Trust, about 70,000 internships are offered each year in the UK. However, it estimates that of 10,000 graduates who are in internships six months after they leave university, a fifth are unpaid.

Unpaid internships do not help recent claims that graduates are now receiving poor returns for their time in higher education. Speaking to the BBC, a spokesman for Universities UK stated: “we must, however, be careful to avoid using graduate salaries as the single measure of success in higher education”.

Business minister Andrew Griffiths has also said: “Employing unpaid interns as workers to avoid paying the national minimum wage is against the law and exploitative. No one should feel like they have to work for free to get the skills and experience they need to get ahead”.

“Employing unpaid interns as workers to avoid paying the national minimum wage is against the law and exploitative”

Although minimum-wage legislation makes unpaid internships illegal, the government has admitted there have been no recorded prosecutions, leaving students out of pocket.

However, the government has recently sent more than 550 warning letters to companies, with new enforcement teams to tackle repeat offenders.

These letters include guidance that, legally, employers must pay the national minimum wage to interns. If this effort coupled with the new enforcement teams has no effect, however, the government has promised to review the existing policy and legal framework.

The University of Warwick has sought to help students with unpaid internships through the Work Experience Bursary Scheme, which awards students £30 per day, for up to 10 days per year, to fund an internship that is unpaid. However, this is a small sum of money to receive for funding months in an unpaid internship.

When speaking to the BBC, Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “All internships over four weeks should be paid at least the minimum wage of £7.50 per hour. All internship positions should be advertised publicly”.

“All internships over four weeks should be paid at least the minimum wage of £7.50 per hour”

He also said that the current practice of securing internships: “Locks out young people without connections”.

Campaigners have also been contesting the nature in which internships are awarded, condemning those based on contacts rather than merit. They also want to introduce tougher penalties for those found breaking the law, and to make it easier to report unpaid internships to HMRC.

Tanya de Grunwald of Graduate Fog, a campaigner for fair internships, has suggested that the HMRC is not fit for purpose as the complaints process is too slow and ineffective.

“For starters, it relies almost entirely on interns coming forward to complain about their former employers – something few are brave enough to do, for obvious reasons”.

There has further been the suggestion that employers are using the notion of “genuine volunteers”, who do not require pay, as a loophole to avoid paying interns.