The assistant general secretary of the TUC, Kay Carberry, has called on businesses to open up training to older workers during a recent web audience on www.equal-works.com.

Carberry said: “We need to look at the upper age limit for funding apprenticeships, because most apprenticeship funding at the moment is largely limited to people under 25.

“The mistaken view that once you’ve been around for a few decades that’s it, you’re too tired, you’re not going to be able to do anything demanding, all that’s left for you now is to cruise to retirement and potter around the garden.”

She said the priorities were to “scrutinise everything that happens in the workplace to make sure that it‘s free of age discrimination. And secondly train older workers - give older workers more opportunities than they’ve got now.”

She added that some employers felt it wasn’t worth investing in training older workers because they weren’t going to be around that long and  because they believe older workers aren’t going to be susceptible to learning new skills because they ‘re getting a bit doddery and a bit slow.