Recruiter’s are skeptical about the prime minister’s pledge to provide an additional £79m to train the unemployed. Speaking from Iraq Gordon Brown told reporters the money would help give people the skills they needed to get back to work.

However, recruiters doubt the money will be affective in training the candidates they need to meet skill shortages.

James Room, divisional manager of technical recruiter Faststream Recruitment, told Recruiter there is “no quick fix” to the long-term skill shortages in the sector, which have been ignored by the government.

“It is not in the simple skills that we lack resource, if you want carpenters, electricians, plumbers, you can get them. The areas where we lack resource are areas which would have required long term investment, signal engineers, civil and structural chartered engineers.

“Skill shortages are something which the industry as a whole as been identifying for the last ten years. I think it’s a very simplistic view that we just send a load of unemployed people on a quick six minute course and all of a sudden they are employable in skill shortage areas.

James Procter, director, 4Leisure Recruitment, told Recruiter: “Will it impact on us? probably not. The sort of training there talking about would be for people in entry level positions in the leisure industry and typically companies will not use recruiters for those positions.