Business and government have combined to create a skills desert in Britain

As Britain prepares for a deep dive into the unknown, a new study ranking Britain last in attitudes towards technology and skills could leave us drowning, writes James Moore

Learning a skill: this apprentice is getting the chance to do that at Salisbury Cathedral. One in every two workers don’t (Getty)

The skills gap is a lead weight chained to the legs of the British economy. It has long been a problem, but in the shallow waters of the EU swimming pool, it has at least been more or less manageable, at least with a little migrant help.

Trouble is, the UK is preparing to perform a deep dive into a very cold and deep sea, one with a global eco-storm clearly visible on the horizon. And then there are the ships of the robot navy, with guns primed to blow up jobs. That weight could easily lead to UK plc drowning.

Today PwC, the consultancy firm, releases the results of a global study on attitudes to technology and skills.

This is by no means one of those cheap, seat of the pants polls designed to grab a headline or two. Some 22,000 people were surveyed by Opinium in 11 countries, including 2,004 UK adults aged 18-65 (excluding retirees).

Over half (54 per cent) of UK respondents, and 67 per cent of 18-34-year-olds, said they were ready to learn new skills or even completely retrain in order to improve future employability.

But despite this, more than half (51 per cent) also said they hadn’t been given any opportunity to do that, the lowest number of any of the countries included in the exercise. The figures for dynamic economies well equipped to handle the impact of new technologies like India (91 per cent) and China (79 per cent) put us to shame.

For the record, the other nations in the survey were the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, France, Singapore, South Africa and Poland.

Returning to Britain, the exercise revealed that as well as a gender pay gap there is marked gender skilling gap, with men (54 per cent) more likely to be offered training opportunities than women (46 per cent).

Skilled graduates also do a lot better than non-graduates, which is pertinent given that it is lower-skilled jobs that are most likely to be affected by the rise of automation. Older workers lose out compared to younger ones.

The report on the results also cites PwC’s annual CEO survey, which found that eight in 10 top bosses see the availability of skills as a top priority.

Looking at those results, you might very well ask British bosses why they’ve done so little to address the issue. PwC says the employers it speaks to recognise the issue but say it will take time and investment to address. Stop me if you’ve heard that before.

The firm’s UK chair, Kevin Ellis, warns that if action is not taken “swathes of people risk being left behind, exacerbating social and economic inequalities”.

His point is well made. Those inequalities are at the core of some of the nation’s most deep-rooted problems. They have been left to fester for years and have lately started to make themselves felt.

He calls for a combined effort to address the issue including from government and NGOs as well as business. Again, the point is well made. The chancellor/financial PR man for Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, talked a great deal about skills as part of his pre-election attempt to bribe voters with their own money. Some of it will be spent further education colleges. He went to one. So did I. They’re a good place to pick up skills but they have suffered from a longstanding funding drought courtesy of his party.

Javid is hardly the first minister to make a fuss about the issue of skills. But their combined efforts to address the issue have proven less than successful. The report makes that very clear, at a time when the government is proposing to slam the door shut on the migrants who have played such an important role in mitigating the impact of shortages.

One of the government’s flagship policies is the apprenticeship levy which, although it has recently been tweaked, is loathed by business and has proven less than successful in generating new apprenticeship starts.

Perhaps it’s time for a rethink? Perhaps it’s just time for a think about the issue? Trouble is, thinking is something the current administration seems to have little time for. It’s run by a mafia which much prefers PR guff, bluster and threats to the hard work of good governance and making a success of the nation.