Post-Brexit Britain needs a ‘skills revolution’, says Lilley

PETER LILLEY, the former social security secretary, has called for a “skills revolution” after Brexit.

In an interview with The Sunday 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”.

“The lack of emphasis on technical and vocational skills has been a deeprooted 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,” he 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.”