John Denham, Labour's Universities and Skills Secretary, responding to the launch of the Tory policy paper on skills, said:

"The Tory plans are a disastrous mixture of cuts, waste and theft of Government ideas.

"Tory plans to cut Train to Gain would deny over 350,000 people the chance to get vocational qualifications that are proven to bring pay increases and promotion.

"Their plans to increase the number of apprenticeships are less ambitious than Labour plans to create 150,000 new apprenticeships and they would waste millions of pounds on paying for apprenticeships that are already being completed.

"They have copied our ideas for reducing bureaucracy, freeing up FE Colleges and creating Group Training Associations, but they have made proposals which will send apprenticeships back to the days when few people started them, fewer finished and public money was wasted."