Internships should be a beneficial, positive experience for employees. You can have a taste of the world of work, developing essential life skills through their given responsibilities. It can be the stepping stone to a long prosperous career journey in your desired field. Most importantly it is an opportunity to differentiate oneself in the competitive nature of our working world today. 

However, businesses have used it as a tool to exploit young people. Interns are not only 'shadowing' professionals but have to carry out a long list of responsibilities and work the same hours as full time employees. Essentially, business are getting away with not paying interns as based on the outline of GOV.UK interns are not technically employees. Young people are faced into a dilemma to either sacrifice working for free for 3 to 9 months for the potential of being hired into their desired field or to apply straight away with the likelihood of being rejected.

The Sutton Trust in 2018 state that 58,000 internships occur each year unpaid. Additionally they estimated that the minimum monthly cost of doing an unpaid internship, taking into account rent, bills, travel and other livings costs, was £1,019 in London and £827 in Manchester.

The Guardian (2018) A large proportion (43%) of unpaid interns rely on living for free with family and friends; more than a quarter (26%) are dependent on money from their parents, while fewer than three out of 10 (27%) found paid work to subsidise their internship. Meaning people with less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds are pushed away from these opportunities in fields like journalism, fashion and politics.  

Furthermore, I want this petition to create a solution that all internships over a month long duration should be paid a fair wage, to give equal opportunities to everyone. There should be no loop holes or technicalities made based on the internship legislation.