The Tory politician and businessman, Lord Heseltine, gave his opinion on the UK’s skills shortages to the Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee.
Heseltine said that “If we accept that [the country is 29th as a country in the world league of education] we’ll never be a world beating economy in the future because it’s all about people – it’s about education and then about skills.”
The need for good literacy and numeracy skills was made clear. He said:
We need it across the country and we need it yesterday. If you want to have skilled people, you’d better educate them properly before you start making them skilled.
