David Lammy - WorldSkills 2007 UK Team Send-off Reception

I am delighted to have the opportunity to be here tonight to support the UK's WorldSkills 2007 Team as they prepare for the challenge of the competition in Japan. WorldSkills competitions provide a wonderful opportunity for the most highly skilled young people in the UK, such as yourselves, to prove your expertise and compete against your international counterparts, and help raise awareness of the importance of skills both nationally and internationally.

We are confronted by a real challenge in this country to maintain our place in the world, as we face more and more competition from across the globe. So it is important for everybody (business, employees and government) to work in partnership and do everything we can to make sure that we have the skills we need to compete and succeed.

Skills drive productivity - for employers and for people - but they also provide a path out of poverty, into a fairer society. If we are to continue to improve social justice and equality in the UK we must also maintain our long-term economic prosperity, and one of the principal ways to achieve these twin goals is through skills development.

We need a system that provides world-class learning, that rewards the best and eliminates failure. If we are to raise the level of skills in this country then we must also raise the profile of skills. We need to inspire people, increase their aspirations and make sure they understand the value of skills.

By giving people opportunities to compete against each other and show how good they are, we can drive up the quality of skills for everyone across the board. The examples of excellence provided by young people who succeed in national and international skills competitions are an ideal way to do this.

In 2011, the UK will host WorldSkills. This will be a chance to show the world just how highly skilled and ready for the world of work our young people are, at everything from welding to web design.

Coming just a year before the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, WorldSkills London 2011 will give a wonderful opportunity to link world-class performance in sport with world-class performance in skills, to help change public attitudes towards skills positively and permanently. The performance to date of the 2007 team members gives us confidence that our future WorldSkills teams will emerge from a strong and growing base of skills.

I would like to recognise the contribution of the many other people who have worked so hard to support the team members and their development, both throughout the extensive selection process and the period of team building. None of this could have taken place without the competition judges and training managers, and the encouragement provided by your employers, colleges, training providers and of course parents is surely invaluable.

Finally, I would like to wish everybody in the team the very best of luck as you prepare to represent your country in Japan in such a wide range of skills. You can all be very proud of the world-class skills which you have worked so hard to develop, and I'm sure that your performances will show the excellence and talent present throughout the whole UK.

You have all done tremendously well to get this far and I am looking forward to observing your performances when I visit WorldSkills Japan later this month. I'd now like to hand back to Simon Bartley for the presentations to the team.