Evening Standard columnist Rosamund Urwin reflects on the Sutton Trust interns research.

It’s easy to collect internship horror stories. A friend who works on the ultra-competitive creative side in advertising received only £75 a week while on a placement to cover all her expenses. You can get stuck in that role for a year. Her colleague ended up stealing food to survive. Then there are the bad bosses. Tanya de Grunwald, who runs the careers advice blog Graduate Fog, tells me of art gallery interns forced to clean loos, and the editor of a fashion mag — living up to the Devil Wears Prada stereotype — who made a workie scoop up her dog’s excrement from the office carpet.

When interns understandably complain, they’re often told it was ever thus. I’ve never understood that defence; no one would say that racism is acceptable because prejudice has existed for the majority of human history. Simply because an injustice isn’t new isn’t a reason for it to continue. And unpaid internships aren’t just exploitative, they’re illegal. If someone is working for set hours doing tasks an employee would ordinarily be paid for, they are entitled to the minimum wage. Instead, interns effectively pay to work, forking out for accommodation, transport and food. It isn’t exactly revolutionary to suggest that’s the wrong way around.

New research by The Sutton Trust has revealed it costs £926 a month to do an unpaid internship in London. That’s a lot of cash to play stand-in PA or office dogsbody — photocopying and fetching sandwiches while never letting the keen smile slip. An estimated 21,000 interns are working gratis across the UK.

Read her full column here.