Employment programmes should focus more on improving potential employees’ skills, according to speakers at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) National Conference in London.

The North Sea oil and gas industry needs to recruit and train 125,000 workers in the next 10 years as nearly half of the sector is hitting retirement age.

The recruitment industry will hope the Chancellor’s 'pro-growth, pro-jobs' Budget does what it says on the tin: helping businesses and boosting the wider economy both now and in the longer term.

The chancellor George Osborne is understood to be planning to remove national pay rates for public sector workers in his Budget speech on Wednesday.