Mission Statement

Making internships in the Westminster village more transparent, fair and fun.

The Interns’ Network brings together past, present and prospective interns from parliament, think tanks, NGOs and the political media. It is non-partisan and open to all. We aim to help interns make more informed choices about where they work, create a one-stop shop for employment opportunities and a community of political interns; we believe ethical internships are more productive for both interns and employers.

The Interns’ Network advocates and will work towards ‘ethical’ internships. Areas of concern are two-fold:

Addressing access and diversity issues:

• working towards bursaries to support living costs;
  
• helping to facilitate broad and open advertisement of posts to extend the pool of applicants;
  
• making interns aware of the benefits they can legitimately claim whilst working unpaid;
  
• transforming closed existing networks of interns who already know each other into broad inclusive ones.
  
• Transparency and clarity in describing an intern’s role;
  
• clear information about the tasks that interns may be expected to perform and how their time will be divided between administrative and research tasks;
  
• clear guidelines of responsibility, in both directions, within which interns and employers can operate flexibly as individuals;
  
• up-front advice on how likely it is that interns will find short or long term paid work at the end of their internship;
  
• clarity of financial and non-pecuniary benefits that interns can expect to receive.
  
  

The Interns’ Network will create a Westminster community for interns and a website ‘hub’ to connect them. Interns will benefit from:

• trading tips about:
  

• being connected to alumni who have successfully followed a similar career path;
  
• bringing together like-minded people and having fun.
  
• sharing opportunities, contacts, support, stories, and woes;