Former cabinet minister Michael Portillo claimed apprenticeships have been "resurrected" as he opened a new apprentice training centre in Chesham last week.

Mr Portillo officially opened the new centre at Silverson Machines, which will help train future mechanical engineers, on Wednesday.

The training school recently took on six new apprentices on their five-year programme which offers qualification to NVQ Level 3 and a secure job.

Mr Portillo said: "We often hear that apprenticeships are dead. How wonderful then to come here and find that apprenticeships are alive and in a sense they’ve been resurrected.

"I think the apprentices have a very bright future here, and have been well equipped with this very remarkable, dedicated facility."

The former MP for Kensington and Chelsea also praised British engineering during his speech.

"The normal story about British engineering is that it doesn’t exist and we’re not very good at exporting - but those conventional stories are absolutely negated by what we’ve seen here today.

"I’ve had the most delightful morning touring the factory. I had no idea that there was precision engineering to be found in Chesham."