The UK needs a skills revolution

Credit: industryview / Alamy Stock Photo

4 min read09 June

It is hard to recall a Spending Review so vital to a government’s strategy, nor one so significant to a government’s standing. And whether it is building new homes, investing in infrastructure or getting Britain building again, skills is the issue we need to focus on.

In the Strategic Defence Review, we have already seen ministers putting the nation on a war-readiness footing. This will deter our enemies and bring security. It will also boost the economy with new factories, new submarines and new jobs up and down the supply chain. This is armour-plated Keynesianism, whereby state investment stimulates growth.

This ‘defence dividend’ must be fairly distributed, across the nations and regions, and must create opportunities for all, including in proud, struggling towns like mine in Peterborough. But we must go further and faster. Ministers must look beyond the defence sector and boost the trades that drive economic growth. To do that, we need a skills revolution.

That’s why we need a muscular skills policy at the heart the government’s plans. Muscular because for too long apprenticeships and skills have been a nice to have, not a necessary condition of prosperity.

We need to end the outdated snobbery aimed towards apprenticeships

The need is obvious. The House of Commons Library projects that by 2072 around 22.1 million people, or 27 per cent of the UK population, will be aged 65 or over. Right now, there are over three million people in the UK over 80. We need skilled workers to care for them.

And the population is getting larger. By next year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the population will top 70 million. In the 1940s, it was 50 million. So we need skilled workers to build the homes for these growing millions, as well as provide the goods and services we all need. We cannot solely rely on importing skilled workers from abroad – the scale of demand simply makes that untenable. We must skill this and future generations in every imaginable trade and discipline if we are to prosper in coming decades.

I welcome recent announcements to boost the numbers of skilled brickies, carpenters, and healthcare support workers. Backed by a £3bn apprenticeship budget, young people will get the skills they need to thrive in these priority areas. In my own constituency, we have just opened the Green Technology Centre as part of Peterborough College, which will help train the next generation of car mechanics and construction workers in new technology. These will be skilled jobs offering good prospects, in a part of the country too used to 'change' meaning low-paid, insecure work.

Ministers have made a good start - implementing a 32 per cent increase in the Immigration Skills Charge, which will deliver up to 45,000 additional training places to upskill the domestic workforce as announced in the recent Immigration white paper. I support refocusing funding away from Level 7 (masters-level) apprenticeships from January 2026, while maintaining support for those aged 16 to 21 and existing apprentices. This will enable levy funding to be rebalanced towards training at lower levels, where it can have the greatest impact. It is rather ridiculous to be funding Masters-level apprenticeships at the cost of supporting 16-year-olds.

The Education Secretary has written to Skills England, establishing this new body’s priorities for the coming year: using data to fill skills gaps, working alongside the Industrial Strategy, encouraging employers to create opportunities, and making the routes into apprenticeships clearer and simpler. As Bridget Philipson writes in her letter: "this agenda is urgent and central to the government’s missions".

But of course, we must go further. I am looking forward to a Spending Review which boosts skills, apprenticeships and taps into the vast wealth of energy and talent that young people possess. Beyond the Spending Review, we need to end the outdated snobbery aimed towards apprenticeships. Simultaneously learning and earning, and gaining skills for life should be a hugely attractive offer. This offer should be available to all who might benefit in every part of the country.

Apprenticeships are the route to a stronger economy, a more cohesive society, individual fulfilment, and the economic growth on which this government will be judged.

Andrew Pakes is the MP for Peterborough, and co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships