MPs have called for unpaid internships to be banned and urged employers to take candidates from disadvantaged families to stop the middle classes dominating the professions.
The law, finance, medicine, journalism, politics and the arts disproportionately recruit from private schools and elite universities, the MPs said.
The all-party parliamentary group on social mobility has published a report calling on the government to outlaw unpaid internships of longer than four weeks when interns are expected to perform tasks that would otherwise be carried out by a paid employee.
During an inquiry into access to the professions, the group was told by Sir Peter Bazalgette, chairman of ITV, that unpaid internships were “the curse of the arts industry” with an expectation that young people would work without pay or for less than the minimum wage, and were a barrier to young people who could not afford to work for nothing.
The MPs and peers, who took evidence from 33 leading figures from the professions and arts, said that only a small proportion of employers made use of contextual data and some of those that did were not transparent about how they did so, meaning potential applicants from poor families were unaware that they might be considered.
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They also accused the professions of being too concentrated in London.
The chairmen, Justin Madders MP and Baroness Tyler, said: “Our professions should reflect our communities and our country, and employers themselves would ultimately benefit from harnessing the broader experience and potential of the country as a whole.”