Tony Blair will pay interns working in his profit-making businesses, his private office has told the Guardian.
The sudden change in policy comes less than a week after it was revealed that the multimillionaire former prime minister had been using unpaid "volunteers" in his office for three months at a time and a day after the Guardian published details of a possible investigation by HMRC, which enforces the minimum wage.
Blair's office was also exposed by the careers website Graduate Fog for turning down an intern who had passed a series of tests and interviews because they could only come into the office and work for free for four days a week instead of five.
The series of emails between the intern and Blair's office – which included a list of tasks which interns were expected to carry out such as opening the post and taking phone messages – brought into question whether interns working in the Office of Tony Blair and his consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, were volunteers or workers.
Introduced by Blair's government in 1998, national minimum wage law states that those who perform tasks that can be classified as work must be paid.
During the past 18 months campaigners have been stepping up attempts to use the law to make employers pay interns, who can sometimes work in businesses for more than a year without remuneration.
HMRC has also been writing to businesses it thinks may be in breach of the law, causing consternation among human resources departments.
Last year, the Guardian revealed that government lawyers had advised ministers that "the concept [of internships] has become endemic" and that most employers were likely to be breaking the law.
"Legal colleagues take the view that most interns are likely to be workers and therefore entitled to the NMW [national minimum wage] and other worker rights," the document to ministers stated.
In a statement last night, the Office of Tony Blair said it would now pay interns who worked for longer periods of time. "Over the past five years the Office of Tony Blair has had a small number of voluntary interns gaining work experience in the organisation.
"The vast majority came to us at their request, unadvertised for voluntary work. Of those, a number have since become full-time paid employees with us. We have also always acted on legal advice in respect of any intern.
"Nonetheless from now on, if we do have interns for an extended period ie around three months, we will pay them the national minimum wage.
The office added that the charities that Blair heads would, however, not be paying. "Two of the charities do have voluntary intern programmes. As independent charities they pay expenses," the office said.
Tanya de Grunwald from Graduate Fog, who help gather evidence against Blair's office, said it was another victory in a string of successful cases.
"This is a major victory for interns – and it proves that they have more power than they think they do.
"This is the latest in a string of cases where high-profile employers have either changed their policy on unpaid interns or awarded back pay to their young workers retrospectively as a result of our naming and shaming.
"Public concern about youth unemployment means it is becoming increasingly embarrassing for big brands of famous individuals to be caught using unpaid interns for extended periods and we are determined to exploit their fear of bad press.
"With Twitter and Facebook these stories can spread in minutes – and the nature of the internet means they can never be erased. As more interns are now coming forward to tell us their stories, big employers who have been using unpaid interns should be very worried indeed."
However, Gus Baker from Intern Aware queried why Blair wasn't paying all his interns. "While it is good and welcome that Blair has relented and agreed to pay the interns in his private office, he still reportedly does not pay those working for his charity.
"Failing to pay at least the national minimum wage isn't just unfair on interns who are asked work for free, it excludes those who can't afford to. Tony Blair should know better and pay all his interns a fair wage."
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
