Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor for Business and Enterprise for London, believes the mind-set of employees are changing and older workers and employees willing to retrain to update their skills but feels there is a “structural problem” which exists within the training and education system.

Kit comments: “We’ve moved away from the old Japanese model of having a job for life.  We’re moving to a new mind-set when people are willing to retrain, sometimes at a later age … Still, there’s a lot more that can be done.  There’s been a structural problem within our training and education system for a while now.  We’ve allowed the people who are going through the system to decide what they want to do rather than employers taking centre stage and highlighting the skills that they are looking for.”

The assembly were discussing apprenticeship schemes and addressing the issue of providing people with the right skills to get back into work after being made redundant.