Ed Miliband needs to show leadership over internships

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

It’s easy to laugh at Nick Clegg and poke fun at his reverse Midas touch. It’s easy to marvel at his inability to even attempt something positive – like improving social mobility – without looking like a hypocrite.

Fair play to Nick Clegg though. He obviously could have gone about things in a better way, but he has made a stand on an important issue. Ed Miliband should do more than follow him – he should commit to going further and faster.

Only last year during the Labour leadership contest – won in part by the hard work and dedication of thousands of young people – Ed Miliband signed a pledge organised by Intern Aware that said:

“If I am elected leader of the Labour Party I will campaign for Labour’s Minimum Wage Act to be fully enforced so that employers must pay their interns what they are due.”

And yet six months into his reign as Labour Party leader and we have seen little movement on this except a tepid statement which encouraged fellow Labour MPs to start paying their interns. If we are to hold Nick Clegg in contempt for his failure to keep his pledge on tuition fees, we should hold our leader to a similarly high standard. Encouraging isn’t enough though. To deal with the modern day (unpaid) servitude of political internships, Miliband will need to show leadership, and soon.

This is about so much more than the ability of a few young people who want to work in politics to gain the experience that they need to succeed. We are increasingly seeing a political class – with the advantages, the resources and the connections – dominate our party. Internships are the most likely way for such people to gain a toehold in Westminster. Yet these very “opportunities” exclude those who aren’t lucky enough to be able to take them up.

If you are poor or poorly connected, if you live outside London or can’t afford to live in London without a salary, then it can feel like the Labour Party is saying that you don’t matter a damn. The party is a closed shop. A club for those who can find a way to take the restricted opportunities available to them.

MPs though are in a tight spot. Their funds are now controlled by IPSA (the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority). Most don’t have the funds to properly pay their staff a wage that reflects their skills and their workload. Many take on unpaid interns purely as a means of staying on top of their casework. To do otherwise might mean letting down their constituents, or grossly over-burdening their already under-paid staff.

What Ed Miliband should do tomorrow is call upon the government and IPSA to completely reform the way that parliament is run. He should demand that unpaid internships in all party’s are a thing of the past, and that MPs are provided with the funds to pay a reasonable number of interns a living wage. He should also call for an open and transparent approach to selecting interns.

He should match what Clegg has proposed, and go further, not only because it chimes with our Labour values, or because it is good for the diversity of our politics – but because it is the right thing to do.

Our party was founded on the principle of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. It shames our party, our parliament and our democracy for us to allow this shameful practice to continue. Miliband needs to make amends, act swiftly and right this wrong, before Nick Clegg takes all the credit.