Unpaid interns charged £300 for a job reference by thinktank Civitatis

From The Guardian on 11/01/2015

A former aide to a Liberal Democrat peer has been condemned for charging former unpaid interns at his thinktank “£300 a go” for employment references.

Jan Mortier, who describes himself as a former consultant to Lord Garden, a one-time defence spokesman for Nick Clegg’s party, has admitted that he charges former unpaid trainees at his Civitatis International organisation for references, but denied that they had been interns, on the basis that they had been “trained directly” by him.

Civitatis International advertises itself as a private foundation “committed to promoting peace, dialogue and co-operation between nations and civilisations”, and has submitted evidence to parliamentary select committees as a thinktank. Until a year ago it ran a “junior associates” programme under which young people were charged over £1,600 for a three-month “unique experience in project management training at our international secretariat in the City of London that was instituted by us because British universities are not giving the skills or experience necessary to help young people secure careers in the policy sector”.

The junior associates programme, which did not offer a recognised qualification at the end or a guaranteed job, had been advertised on a website called Internwise, among others, which promotes itself as a “tool ideal to meet employers and gain some work experience”. At least one former junior associate has posted an online CV describing his role at Civitatis International as an “internship”. Civitatis invites “successful” junior associates to pay an additional £400 to £600 a year to become fellows of the organisation, which it describes as a private members’ club for “future leaders”.

Now it has emerged that Mortier, 37, has written to those who had been on the junior associate programme to inform them they must pay a £300 fee each time they want an employment reference.

Tanya de Grunwald, the founder of Graduate Fog, a graduate careers blog and a campaigner against the exploitation of the young, last night condemned Mortier and his organisation and said it was an extreme example of how the hopes of young people were abused. There has been a huge growth in unpaid internships in recent times, with an estimated 100,000 places advertised a year.

De Grunwald said: “Employing unpaid interns is bad enough, but charging them for a reference when they leave is appalling. We keep being assured that the graduate job market is picking up, but this case shows that there are still dark corners of it where unscrupulous employers find they can take advantage of young jobseekers’ desperation and naivety. This guy should be ashamed.”

Civitatis’s website says it was founded in 2012. A company with the same name, of which Mortier was a director, was struck off Companies House records in 2009 after being dissolved. It is not registered with the Charities Commission. Mortier declined to comment on the organisation’s tax status.

Civitatis’s website is advertising a summer school at a cost of £400 for the week. Those who attend are promised a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students around the world to gain employable skills”. It claims that it can offer “an introduction to the thinking of the Club of Rome”, the global thinktank where Mortier claims on his Linkedin profile to have “advised the secretary general on various issues”. A spokesman for the Club of Rome told the Observer: “Jan Mortier was an intern at the Club of Rome for five months in 2010. He left a month early following a dispute. There is no link between the Club of Rome and Civitatis International.” A spokesman for Civitatis said Mortier was a “full member of the Club of Rome EU chapter”, an affiliated Belgian organisation.

Civitatis’s website claims that “for a decade, Civitatis International has been coaching our junior associates to get policy jobs paying £24-£32,000 per year with a 100% success rate”. When approached by the Observer, Mortier admitted that “one or two” alumni might not have reached their goals yet. He said the £300 fee for an employment reference was a “fair administrative fee”.

Motherhood, the career that dare not speak its name

By Cristina Odone Politics Last updated: March 13th, 2013 

Claire Perry MP: motherhood is a career

Claire Perry, Tory MP for Devizes and childhood guru to David Cameron, says she's had three careers: she's been a banker, a mother and a politician. It is brave of her – and not because bankers and politicians are the most despised professions around. Ms Perry is brave because she makes claims for motherhood that has too many feminists and members of the Coalition sneering: it is a full-time, unpaid job.

Perry is promoting "Mothers at Home Matter", a group that wants the Coalition to recognise the contribution of stay-at-home mothers. Their message is urgent: when the state has to step in to care for children, the tax payers end up paying millions in creches and programmes like SureStart – now recognised as a hugely expensive Labour failure.

Worse, psychologists are now worrying that being raised outside their home environment by a succession of "professionals" can scar children for life. In Sweden, where this is a matter of routine, school records show the highest truancy and "worst classroom disorder" in western Europe. The star witness for MAHM was Jonas Himmlestrand, expert in Swedish family policy, who reported that his homeland, where 90 per cent of children are in subsidised child care, has seen a serious decline in adolescent mental health, between 1986 -2002 declined faster than in 10 comparable European countries.

So, forget the Swedish model. MAHM believes the key to happy families is to change the tax system that right now forces women to work. The UK is almost alone amongst developed countries in not recognising family and spousal responsibilities in its tax system. The burden on the single earner has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Many single earner families are in the poorest third of the population. MAHM want families taxed on the basis of household rather than individual income. They call "for a debate about income-splitting, transferable tax allowances and protecting child benefit for parents with dependent children."

Politicians should pay attention: the number of mothers who stay at home is down to a third — but, as I found out when I researched "What Women Really Want" for the Centre for Policy Studies, the majority of mothers would like to stay at home to look after their children. That's quite a constituency, Messrs Cameron et al. Ignore it (and your pledge to introduce family tax credits) at your peril.

This Poundland ruling is a welcome blow to the Work Programme

It's invaluable that three judges have ruled in the Cait Reilly case against an appalling back-to-work system

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 February 2013 15.02 GMT

Cait Reilly after winning her claim that requiring her to work for free was unlawful. Photograph: Cathy Gordon/PA

 

Before we get too excited about the judges' ruling in Reilly and Wilson v the secretary of state, this is not a judgment against slavery or forced labour. Both Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson lodged this appeal on the basis that, in forcing them to do unpaid work or lose their benefits, the government was breaching its own regulations.

You may think that there is a moral case to answer for the secretary of state, in pulling someone away from unpaid work in a sector they're interested in, forcing them instead to work unpaid stacking shelves in Poundland, with no training and no advancement of their skills, driving down wages for the rest of Poundland's employees while benefiting nobody but the retailer and the workfare provider. I know that's what I think.

You might think that when you train a skilled engineer to clean furniture – on the basis that the reason for his idleness was that he'd got out of the habit of work, that he needed to prove his mettle with whatever menial task you chose for him – there's a moral case to answer here, too. I'd agree.
But judges Black, Pill and Burnton haven't ruled on morality, they have merely ruled on nuts and bolts: Reilly was told that her scheme was mandatory, where in fact it was not. Wilson was told that if he refused to take part in a six-month work experience programme, he'd lose his benefits for that period. In fact, the maximum sanction would have been a two-week loss of benefits.

Nevertheless, though a ruling on slavery might have added some weight to it, this remains a punch in the face for this government, the Work Programme generally, and workfare in particular. Even the profile of these two cases significantly damages the reputation of this policy, whose raison d'etre is that long-term unemployment is the result of people getting out of the habit of work.

"What are the barriers that people have?" the employment minister Mark Hoban wondered aloud today on World at One. "One of the things people need to demonstrate to an employer is that they can turn up on time." This old chestnut – that long-term unemployment is the preserve of people who can't haul their sorry bones out of bed, must be countered all the time. The more cases we know about of unemployed people who are highly trained, gainfully occupied and routinely insulted by stupid workfare suggestions, the better.

On a practical note, people who've had their jobseeker's allowance stopped on grounds that are similar to Reilly or Wilson's can now claim the money back. This rights a grave social wrong, and delivers a sorely needed sanction to the workfare providers themselves, who understand nothing but money, and might finally question their deficiencies with cash at stake.

But most importantly, there is a growing sense that this back-to-work system is corrupt – my colleague Shiv Malik discovered recently that people on unpaid schemes were being counted as employed to massage the government's figures, even though by any reasonable person's understanding, they were not. Then the BBC revealed that people were being told to declare themselves "self-employed", even when they were simply without work, on the false basis that they could claim more in in-work benefits than JSA – the real benefit, of course, accruing to the Work Programme provider who could then claim them as having been "helped".

All the statistics released about the Work Programme show execrable results, and yet we've heard nothing about penalties, or remaking the contracts, or rethinking the system. There is a creeping sense that this is turning into a cash cow for the private sector, a get-out-clause for the government ("we've spent all this money, if people can't get jobs despite our help, it's because they are inadequate"), and unemployed people will be left at the bottom, ceaselessly harassed by a totally specious narrative in which their laziness beggars a try-hard administration.

A judge, casting doubt on all this in a sober way, is invaluable – three judges, better still. It makes me want to shake the legal profession by its giant hand.

£13tn: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite

• Study estimates staggering size of offshore economy
• Private banks help wealthiest to move cash into havens

• Heather Stewart, business editor
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 July 2012 21.00 BST

The Cayman Islands: a favourite haven from the taxman for the global elite. Photograph: David Doubilet/National Geographic/Getty Images

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.

Oil-rich states with an internationally mobile elite have been especially prone to watching their wealth disappear into offshore bank accounts instead of being invested at home, the research suggests. Once the returns on investing the hidden assets is included, almost £500bn has left Russia since the early 1990s when its economy was opened up. Saudi Arabia has seen £197bn flood out since the mid-1970s, and Nigeria £196bn.

"The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments," the report says.

The sheer size of the cash pile sitting out of reach of tax authorities is so great that it suggests standard measures of inequality radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor. According to Henry's calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world's population – a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies.

"These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people," said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "People on the street have no illusions about how unfair the situation has become."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Countries around the world are under intense pressure to reduce their deficits and governments cannot afford to let so much wealth slip past into tax havens.

"Closing down the tax loopholes exploited by multinationals and the super-rich to avoid paying their fair share will reduce the deficit. This way the government can focus on stimulating the economy, rather than squeezing the life out of it with cuts and tax rises for the 99% of people who aren't rich enough to avoid paying their taxes."

Assuming the £13tn mountain of assets earned an average 3% a year for its owners, and governments were able to tax that income at 30%, it would generate a bumper £121bn in revenues – more than rich countries spend on aid to the developing world each year.

Groups such as UK Uncut have focused attention on the paltry tax bills of some highly wealthy individuals, such as Topshop owner Sir Philip Green, with campaigners at one recent protest shouting: "Where did all the money go? He took it off to Monaco!" Much of Green's retail empire is owned by his wife, Tina, who lives in the low-tax principality.

A spokeswoman for UK Uncut said: "People like Philip Green use public services – they need the streets to be cleaned, people need public transport to get to their shops – but they don't want to pay for it."

Leaders of G20 countries have repeatedly pledged to close down tax havens since the financial crisis of 2008, when the secrecy shrouding parts of the banking system was widely seen as exacerbating instability. But many countries still refuse to make details of individuals' financial worth available to the tax authorities in their home countries as a matter of course. Tax Justice Network would like to see this kind of exchange of information become standard practice, to prevent rich individuals playing off one jurisdiction against another.

"The very existence of the global offshore industry, and the tax-free status of the enormous sums invested by their wealthy clients, is predicated on secrecy," said Henry.
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BUSINESS

22 July 2012 Last updated at 15:43

Tax havens: Super-rich 'hiding' at least $21tn

COMMENTS (421)

A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion (£13tn) hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study.

The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.

The Price of Offshore Revisited was written by James Henry, a former chief economist at the consultancy McKinsey, for by the Tax Justice Network.

Tax expert and UK government adviser John Whiting said he was sceptical that the amount hidden was so large.

Mr Whiting, director of the Office of Tax Simplification, said: "There clearly are some significant amounts hidden away, but if it really is that size what is being done with it all?"

Mr Henry said his $21tn is actually a conservative figure and the true scale could be $32tn. A trillion is 1,000 billion.

Mr Henry used data from the Bank of International Settlements, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and national governments.

His study deals only with financial wealth deposited in bank and investment accounts, and not other assets such as property and yachts.

The report comes amid growing public and political concern about tax avoidance and evasion. Some authorities, including in Germany, have even paid for information on alleged tax evaders stolen from banks.

The group that commissioned the report, Tax Justice Network, campaigns against tax havens.

Mr Henry said that the super-rich move money around the globe through an "industrious bevy of professional enablers in private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries.

"The lost tax revenues implied by our estimates is huge. It is large enough to make a significant difference to the finances of many countries.

"From another angle, this study is really good news. The world has just located a huge pile of financial wealth that might be called upon to contribute to the solution of our most pressing global problems," he said.

'Huge black hole'

The report highlights the impact on the balance sheets of 139 developing countries of money held in tax havens that is put beyond the reach of local tax authorities.

Mr Henry estimates that since the 1970s, the richest citizens of these 139 countries had amassed $7.3tn to $9.3tn of "unrecorded offshore wealth" by 2010.

Private wealth held offshore represents "a huge black hole in the world economy," Mr Henry said.

Mr Whiting, though, urged caution. "I cannot disprove the figures at all, but they do seem staggering. If the suggestion is that such amounts are actively hidden and never accessed, that seems odd - not least in terms of what the tax authorities are doing. In fact, the US, UK and German authorities are doing a lot."

He also pointed out that if tax havens were stuffed with such sizeable amounts, "you would expect the havens to be more conspicuously wealthy than they are".

Other findings in Mr Henry's report include:

• At the end of 2010, the 50 leading private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1tn in cross-border invested assets for private clients
• The three private banks handling the most assets offshore are UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs
• Less than 100,000 people worldwide own about $9.8tn of the wealth held offshore.