The tax could be used to pay for training in the West Midlands. A similar scheme in France enables businesses to pay a training tax which is pooled into a central fund. Businesses can then apply to the fund to pay for staff training.

Ms O' Grady said that a compulsory training levy might be the only way to improve skills. She told icBirmingham:

"Clearly we have a big job to do to build people's confidence and their ability to take opportunities to train.

"Our experience through our 15,000 elected union learning representatives around the country is very simple: if you provide training in paid working time, ideally where people are working, you will get not just high take-up but high completion."