Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today told tell students that a Liberal Democrat government would establish 800,000 paid internships to help young people into employment.
Mr Clegg’s comments came in the first of a series of question and answer sessions posted by the leaders of all the main political parties on The Student Room, the country’s leading student social networking site.
He said: “There are now a lot of interns working very hard and getting paid little or nothing for it. The danger is ending up in a situation where internships are exclusive to those young people whose parents can afford to help them. Internships can be an amazing way of getting a flavour for a possible career when you’re young and that option should be open to as many young people as possible. I know myself how fantastic that experience can be – I got to intern in New York, working on a magazine called ‘The Nation’ for Christopher Hitchens.
“Opening up the opportunity to intern to more people is important to my party, and we have a plan to create 800,000 internships in our first year in office, helping all the young people now struggling to find work. We’ve made sure that those places will be paid at £55 a week – enough to cover basic costs, and more than you get collecting Job Seekers’ Allowance.”
The full session is hosted here: www.thestudentroom.co.uk/nickclegg.
Answers from Mr Clegg, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas will be posted in response to 10 questions shortlisted from 400 previously submitted by some of The Student Room’s 2.8 million unique users.
The key points of Mr Clegg’s question and answer session include:
Phasing out tuition fees, so that education is based on ability, not ability to pay
Working to ensure young people “do not have their future mortgaged because of mistakes they didn’t make themselves”
Calling for the Digital Economy Bill to be repealed and its issues revisited, as it is “too heavily weighted in favour of big corporations and those worried about too much information becoming available”
Making the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs completely independent of government “so that it is science, not politics, that determines drugs policy”
Prioritising tackling homophobic bullying in schools
Looking to put science and technology, rather than finance, at the heart of the UK’s economy
Mr Clegg also revealed a university dalliance with transcendental meditation and that Montana would be his choice of destination for a gap year.
