Last month, for the first time in years, upReach held a fringe meeting at a Party Conference. We were pleased to do so in partnership with Progress. We did this because there is real urgency to removing a major barrier to career success for young people from working class and low income families. Namely, unpaid internships, which are exclusive and exploitative in equal measure and which have no place in the future of work.
Less than halfway through the current Parliament, and in line with many other charities, we chose only to attend the conference of the party of government, which happens to be Labour. Next year, depending on the political circumstances, we might attend two or more party conferences. Plus, of course, we would like to see all the mainstream parties in the UK commit to a ban on unpaid internships.
We are strictly neutral on party politics, but not on policy, and a proper legal ban on unpaid internships is one of upReach’s four policy priorities. That’s why we also went to Labour Conference in Liverpool this year to hold the government’s feet to the fire on their manifesto pledge to ban unpaid internships.
Bizarrely, during Keir Starmer’s premiership, a decision was taken not to honour this promise. That decision was taken before Alan Milburn’s diagnostic report was published, showing just how serious the NEET crisis is in the UK. Now that Andy Burnham is Prime Minister, and given his government’s renewed focus on creating more and better opportunities for young people, we think that poor Starmer-era decision should be reviewed and reversed by Burnham and his new Cabinet.
In particular, securing a proper legal ban on unpaid internships is an early test for Bridget Phillipson MP, now the full-time Cabinet Minister for Equalities, and her new ‘Class Unit’ in Whitehall.
Just to be clear, this is not about requiring employers to pay students who attend an insight day or work experience (although they should cover reasonable expenses to ensure fair access to these opportunities). This is about paying students fairly when they are doing actual work for an employer on an internship. Along with our friends at The Sutton Trust, we would recommend a ban on unpaid internships that are more than four weeks long (as an absolute minimum).
The moral and business arguments for banning unpaid internships.
As the graduate jobs market becomes ever more brutally competitive and ever more disrupted by AI, the risk gets greater that it’s the least privileged and least connected students who miss out on getting the most prestigious jobs (or any graduate job at all). This is fundamentally unfair. Yet the business case for ensuring every student can fulfil their career potential is also rock solid; employers who fail to cast the recruitment net as wide as possible risk missing out on top talent. Yes, employers might have to work a little bit harder to identify the superstar performers of the future who come from non-traditional backgrounds, yet the return on investment makes it worthwhile.
It’s important to understand the corporate and cultural context here. Powerful forces shape the chances of success for students from working class or low income families who are trying to break into top graduate jobs; they want to land these jobs on merit, and they are full of talent and drive, yet all sorts of unfair obstacles still stand in their way. That is particularly the case for students who live and study outside London. In fact, the problem of unpaid internships is hugely relevant to young people in Andy Burnham’s own Makerfield constituency and the seats of most of the Cabinet.
The 2025 ‘Elitist Britain’ report from The Sutton Trust shows how strong a grip the privately educated – a clumsy but useful proxy for the small but privileged sections of society – have on the upper echelons of the UK’s businesses, professions, media, politics, judiciary, senior civil service and so on. The pace of change since the last ‘Elitist Britain’ report in 2019 is glacial, and not even universal. At the BBC, the proportion of senior executives from privileged backgrounds has gone up by 10 percentage points; something for the new Director General, Matt Brittin, to tackle.
In addition, all the evidence from universities shows there is a stubborn ‘progression gap’ into good graduate employment and decent starting salaries for students who got into the university the hard way. That’s the problem that upReach exists to solve.
Why does banning unpaid internships matter so much now?
Perhaps even more worrying than the raw numbers on the graduate jobs market are the subtle shifts happening in how recruitment is being done, and this risks the return of nepotism and self-replicating elites who have no monopoly on talent. This would be devastating for social mobility and another brake on productivity growth and national prosperity.
There are two key shifts happening in how employers are doing recruitment, both of which are about refocusing on the human and relational element of professional life. This is welcome in principle, yet there are big risks with these changes: First, to counteract the tsunami of almost identical AI-written applications, some employers are reverting to a more human approach and picking a far higher proportion of their graduate recruits from the pool of students they have already got to know personally through things like insight days, work experience weeks, industry placements and internships.
This makes sense, but of course the problem here is the massive class gap in which students get access to these ‘stepping stone’ opportunities and which do not. The extent to which these opportunities are still (a) unadvertised and (b) unpaid is scandalous, and this shuts out students from less-connected and less well-off backgrounds. Indeed, there is a temptation to revert to the bad old ways of blatant nepotism and for senior people at some employers just to gift plum jobs to their own children/godchildren/nieces and nephews/kids of university friends.
Factor in how crazily London-centric our economy still is – and I write as a proud yet aggrieved Mancunian who leads upReach from our Manchester office – and the negative impact on social mobility is magnified dramatically.
The second shift happening is that employers are increasingly insisting on proven human-centric and interpersonal skills (what used to be called, annoyingly and misleadingly, ‘soft skills’). This is an intentional and necessary counterbalance to employers also wanting all applicants to have at least a basic competence and confidence in using AI ethically and effectively.
However, there is also a huge class divide in which students get the opportunity to acquire these interpersonal skills – not to mention the self-confidence to put themselves forward for the most coveted jobs – because the experiences that tend to develop these skills cost time and money; students like upReach Associates are short of both time and money, because they struggle financially at school and university and are juggling multiple part-time jobs to stay solvent on what is meant to be a full-time degree course.
In a nutshell, working class students just cannot afford to take a break from their paid work to work for free in an unpaid internship.
If a promise to ban unpaid internships was in the Labour Manifesto, what’s the problem?
When Labour published its manifesto and its commitments to ‘Make Work Pay’ in the run-up to the 2024 General Election, the trade unions and charities warmly welcomed the pledge to ban unpaid internships. Indeed, I spoke about it on a panel at the Progress Conference in May 2024 and wrote about it in a previous Progress blog.
Early in the life of the Labour government, all the signs and the private assurances indicated the promise to ban unpaid internships would be kept. The social mobility sector was encouraged that Ministers held a ‘call for evidence’ on how to implement the ban, and upReach was among those who submitted evidence. The overwhelming majority of those responding to this consultation favoured a ban on unpaid internships.
Unfortunately, in early 2026 and when Starmer was still Prime Minister, a decision was taken not to implement the ban. This came as a nasty surprise, especially as the stated reasons did not make sense. Starmer’s government said it intended to rely on the enforcement of existing rules on the minimum wage, and to issue guidance to firms against the exploitation of young workers on internships. In other words, Starmer wanted to stick with the status quo, even though that status quo has always failed to tackle the problem. I am not aware of a single case of an employer being prosecuted for failing to pay an intern for the work they have done.
The crisis in opportunity for young people is only getting worse, and that decision by Starmer was wrong at the time and looks even worse now, not least in the light of the diagnostic report from Alan Milburn about the national scandal of one million NEETs. Indeed, that report found that 15% of NEETs are graduates.
Milburn’s interim report found that lack of work experience is the barrier to employment that young people cite most frequently, and that most of the NEET young people his team met had done no work experience at all. Yet across the economy and our professions, that first rung on the career ladder is often still unpaid, which reserves it for those whose families can cover the cost and/or those who already live in the capital.
That’s why we believe Andy Burnham and his Cabinet should review the Starmer decision, reverse it, and honour the Labour manifesto pledge to ban unpaid internships.
This would not just be in the national interest, but also important to Cabinet Ministers as constituency MPs. Students who come from constituencies such as the Prime Minister’s in Makerfield or Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), or Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), or Wigan (Lisa Nandy), or Staybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Rerynolds), or Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), or Wolverhampton South East (Pat McFadden), or Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and so on all face major obstacles to career success, including unpaid internships. Many of these students – and their parents and grandparents – will have voted Labour in the General Election in the legitimate expectation that a ban would be introduced if Labour won.
What next?
I think this ban will happen. On a purely personal note, having known Andy Burnham for 25 years, I find it impossible to believe that he would not want to see a ban on unpaid internships introduced. I regard Burnham’s commitment to young people, and his determination to open up more chances and choices in life for them, as the golden thread throughout his entire political career. It began during his time as an Adviser to Tessa Jowell and Chris Smith, and has continued through his time as an MP, a Minister, Mayor of Greater Manchester and now as Prime Minister.
For upReach, along with our friends in the Social Mobility Alliance, we will continue to press the Labour Government to honour its Manifesto pledge. I am sure the TUC and the trade union movement will also continue to champion this cause.
More immediately, we would urge Alan Milburn to include a recommendation to Ministers to ban unpaid internships in his final report on tackling the NEET crisis. And we would urge Ministers to use this as the moment to review and to reverse the poor decision on this issue made under Keir Starmer.
How upReach helps to level the playing field for working class students.
The work of upReach is quite niche, yet more needed than ever. The charity’s mission is to help undergraduate students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to secure highly-skilled graduate jobs. We achieve this through working closely in partnership with leading employers and universities to deliver a programme of 1-to-1 coaching to eligible undergraduates. upReach has 90 staff across offices in Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and London.
The students supported by upReach – known as Associates – are all exclusively state-school educated in the UK and most of them had a household income of less than £25K and are the first generation of their family to go to university. While upReach is focused on supporting young people from the most challenging socio-economic backgrounds, the gender balance on our programmes is roughly 50-50 and around 70% of Associates are from an ethnic minority or mixed race background.
The careers support offered by upReach is highly personalised, and every single Associate has a named member of the upReach staff team as their 1-to-1 career coach. Associates often join upReach in their first year of university and enjoy this 1-to-1 support and an extensive range of resources and experiences throughout their time at university, including insight days, work experience weeks, and paid internships. This means that Associates are able to show their true potential to graduate employers and to compete successfully for graduate jobs against students from far more privileged backgrounds.
Thanks to our brilliant staff team, we are very good at what we do. upReach proudly holds a Queen’s Award for Enterprise as a testament to the quality and impact of our work. We also have strong, proven results from the latest independent evaluation of our impact from the National Centre for Social Research. Our data analysis clearly shows that upReach Associates who do an internship are even more likely to get a great graduate job than those who don’t.
That’s why we care so much about a ban on unpaid internships – finally! – becoming law, and that’s why we hope and expect Andy Burnham’s Government to honour the Labour manifesto pledge.
