Parliament needs to address “the damaging culture” of unpaid internships, the shadow secretary of state for education said at the Labour party conference yesterday.

Andy Burnham told delegates that young people were often forced to take low paid jobs or unpaid internships to break into the labour market, but that “trading on people’s desperation to get on in life is unacceptable”.

“Parliament may have to legislate to protect young people in the 21st century who are being exploited... I don’t think this can carry on”, he told a youth unemployment fringe event in Liverpool.

However, shadow minister for higher education David Lammy, appearing in the same session, was at odds with his Labour colleague. He admitted he did not pay his office interns and disagreed that legislation should be brought in to set a minimum wage rate.

Responding to criticism from the floor, the MP for Tottenham defended his approach. He explained that he did not want to be restricted by stipulated salaries for a small number of intern places every year, and that giving local youngsters even an unpaid opportunity was giving them a worthwhile break in their career.

“Getting me on their CV sets them up,” said Lammy. He added that, if legislation imposed a wage for interns, limited budgets would mean his staff would be under “intense pressure” to recruit only graduate interns from the best universities. He argued that he preferred instead to offer many internship opportunities to young people from underprivileged backgrounds in his constituency.

Sharing a platform with the shadow ministers, Stephen Uden, head of skills at Microsoft, said that while the computer giant pays its interns the equivalent of £14,000 per year, some employers may be dissuaded from initiating programs if “checks and balances” made their overhead costs untenable.

He warned that legally defining internships could be “tricky”, and any regulations must work effectively in practice.

Also sitting on the panel at the fringe event was the CBI’s chief policy director, Katja Hall. She warned that young people may be priced out of the labour market by the national minimum wage for younger age categories – £3.78 for 16 to 17-years-olds and £4.98 for 18 to 20-year-olds from October.

“The adult minimum wage rate is half the median [wage in the UK], but the youth rate has crept up to 70 to 80 per cent of median earnings, which is high in proportion,” she told attendees.

Hall explained that there was some evidence the minimum wage was hampering the creation of jobs traditionally taken by workers in these age groups, and fuelling the rising number of unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds.

“Increasing the national minimum wage youth rate by less is hard, but it is the right decision to make,” she added.