Post-Brexit Britain needs a 'skills revolution', says Peter Lilley

Peter Lilley, the former social security secretary, has called for a "skills revolution" after Brexit, as he accused ministers of largely only paying lip service to years of under-investment in training.

In an interview with The Telegraph ahead of his formal introduction to the House of Lords this week, Lord Lilley said Britain must "get back to the idea that the first option of British industry is to train its own people". While a "lack of emphasis" on technical and vocational skills can be traced back more than a century, the Government's efforts to address the problem have "not gone nearly far enough and deep enough," he said.

The former MP, who was trade secretary under Margaret Thatcher before being appointed by John Major as social security secretary, said the problem was increased by Tony Blair's "open borders" policies. He intends to focus on the issue when he re-joins Parliament on Tuesday.

"The lack of emphasis on technical and vocational skills has been a deep rooted problem in Britain for more than a century but it was intensified in the 1990s when Tony Blair deliberately opened up our borders initially first to emigration from outside Europe and then from EU member countries," the former MP said.

"Since then the amount spent per head on training has declined quite significantly, so we made a bad situation worse."

He added: "Though lip service has been paid, actually more than lip service now that they have begun encouraging apprenticeship schemes and so on, it has not gone nearly far enough and deep enough if we are to reverse decades of under-investment in training."

A Department for Education spokesman said: "We are making the most significant reforms to advanced technical education [for] 70 years through the introduction of T Levels - a once in a lifetime opportunity to ensure young people have gold standard qualifications available to them whichever path they choose to pursue."