Some volunteers in the charity sector are being “undermined, exploited or doing a job for free”, charity workers told a Labour consultation into the sector, shadow charities minister Lisa Nandy has said.

She said she has concerns the sector is not “living its values”, and holding itself to high ethical standards, in the way it treats volunteers and staff.

And she called for a voluntary code of practice across the sector to govern the treatment of volunteers.

In an interview published in full today on Civil Society News, Nandy said the party had recently conducted a lengthy consultation into all aspects of the charity sector, and received more response on volunteering than any other subject.

“We heard some quite distressing stories about the way volunteers had been treated,” she said. “We heard they were undermined, exploited, or doing a job for free. Occasionally the way they were treated was even unsafe.

“People felt often there wasn’t the support there that they needed. And I didn’t just hear that from volunteers themselves, but from staff close to the frontline who were working with volunteers. They said often they were left looking after volunteers without the time or training to do it.”

“There is a concern, from below management level, about whether charities are really living their values. Charities are maybe fundraising badly, or engaging in dubious contracts, or treating their volunteers badly.”

She said Labour was concerned about a blurring of lines between internship and volunteering, and that the two should not be confused.

She said she is keen to see more work done to introduce best practice.

“We heard about where the sector has found its own solutions to the problem of how volunteers are treated,” she said. “The museums, for example, have their own voluntary code of practice. We would like to see whether that can be extended across the sector.

“We feel a compulsory code could be very cumbersome, because the sector is so diverse.”