One of the keys to a well paid secure job is to be highly skilled. In the Queens Speech this year Gordon Brown set out how he means to make sure that our young people have the skills they need to be able to compete for the jobs that we currently have to rely on migrant workers to do.

About a week ago, the Prime Minister held a reception in Downing Street for young people aged 16-24. I met young people from all over the country, some at college, some at university and some doing apprenticeships. I took with me a young woman from Copnor called Roxanne Clements, who had been recommended by Highbury College as one of their committed, hard working students. Roxanne is doing an NVQ3 in Beauty Therapy and is very focused on her own career path with the ultimate ambition of owning and running her own salon.

But it is not just our young people that we need to train. Sadly, many adults were let down by the education system going back over 40 years and this government is determined that we will help people back into education and training so that they too can take advantage of all the new highly skilled jobs in our growing economy. We will be funding a massive 400,000 apprenticeships, which will not just be for the school leavers.

New adult training places will be created with a doubling of Government investment in work based skills training. When we link this to support for lone parents, like helping them to access child care support and support for the long term unemployed like identifying training needs and developing skills we can see this is a joined up approach to making sure all the British people have the chance of a good job and not just some. In the early 1990’s under the Tories there was no funding for apprenticeships and mass unemployment.

In Portsmouth we saw generations of families with no-one in work. We have moved a long way since then and with these new measures we will move further still.