Portillo sees new era in jobs market

People must face the fact that they may have to switch careers more than once in a lifetime, Michael Portillo, Secretary of State for Employment, insisted yesterday, writes Patricia Wynn Davies.

Dismissing the nostalgic vision of Britain implied in the past by both the Prime Minister and Labour politicians, he told a Management of Change conference in London: "Our future lies in building an economy which constantly generates a stream of new jobs to replace those which disappear as markets or technology change. In the future, job security will mean fewer jobs for life but more jobs in a lifetime."

People had to be equipped in four ways to rise to the challenge of change, he said. First, they must have the self-confidence to regard change not as a threat but as a normal part of their working lifetime; they must have a higher level of the key skills required in every job; they must have the information to get access to new jobs and skills; and they needed to be able to take responsibility for their own training decisions.