David Cameron backs right of middle-class families to give children a 'leg-up’ by exploiting their contacts — despite the practice being condemned by Nick Clegg.

In an interview published in The Telegraph, the Prime Minister said he would continue helping friends by offering their children internships, saying he was “very relaxed” about the situation. He even disclosed that he had invited a neighbour in for a work placement at his office.

The comments undermined his deputy, the Liberal Democrat leader, who recently said internships for the well-connected were one of the major forces preventing social mobility in Britain.

In the interview, Mr Cameron gave the most personal insight yet into his life as Prime Minister, just under a year after taking office.

He talked about a recent visit he made to the grave of his son, Ivan, who died in 2009 and said welcoming Baroness Thatcher to No10 was like an “out of body experience”. However, Mr Cameron admitted that not winning an outright majority at last year’s election had disappointed Tory supporters.

His decision to disagree publicly with one of Mr Clegg’s most high-profile policy interventions is likely to anger Liberal Democrats, who already resented Mr Cameron’s recent attacks in the debate on the Alternative Vote.

In the interview, Mr Cameron said it was “fine” to help people you knew. “I’ve got my neighbour coming in for an internship,” he said. “In the modern world, of course you’re always going to have internships and interns – people who come and help in your office who come through all sorts of contacts, friendly, political, whatever.

“I do that and I’ll go on doing that. I feel very relaxed about it.”

Earlier this month, Mr Clegg attacked the system that Mr Cameron has now endorsed, describing it as one of the barriers to poor Britons rising up the social hierarchy.

The Deputy Prime Minister criticised the system in which the “sharp-elbowed” and “well-connected” were the only ones with access to the top internships. He said professional life should be “about what you know, not who you know”.

Mr Cameron said Mr Clegg was “trying to make a fair point”, but happily admitted that as a young man he, like Mr Clegg, was helped out by his family connections, getting experience in his father’s stockbrokers. He called that break a “definite leg-up internship”.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, Friday 22nd April 2011