The Chancellor’s promise last week to train thousands of unemployed British workers for British jobs aims high, but misses its target.

Gordon Brown told a meeting of the GMB Union: “It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will become available over the coming few years and to make sure that people who are inactive and unemployed are able to get the new jobs on offer in our country.”

The notion of job creation has always been paramount to our growing industry, in spite of Mr Brown’s recent efforts to undermine investment in this area.

He also went on to state that he would be establishing Employment Partnerships with businesses in the retail, hospitality, and security sector, which would provide support for around 200,000 individuals to find work.

Hospitality in the UK currently employs in the region of two million people, the majority of whom are young people. It also provides employment for school leavers, single parents, people from ethnic backgrounds and immigrant workers.

Working in a hotel, restaurant, or for a caterer also provides many people with their first experience of employment in the UK; for others, it’s the first rung on the ladder of a long career in customer service.

Undoubtedly, these are the groups that the Chancellor’s new initiative seeks to support.

However, creating ‘British jobs for British people’ not only wrongly implies that our industry and others are incapable of doing so, but also that it favours overseas workers over domestic workers.

It is not unique that we have a large number of overseas workers in our industry in particular; there is, of course, a long and chequered history of immigrant labour and service in the UK hospitality industry.

Now a new generation of skilled people from Central and Eastern Europe have found work in this country, helping to drive the hospitality industry into its next phase of development, and are undeniably boosting the UK economy – thus creating more jobs.

With the 2012 Olympics in mind – and very much in view at the moment, courtesy of one visually arresting logo – the Games are being used as a means by which to boost employment in London and the South East over the next six years.

Rightly so – but we first need to tackle the ingrained cultural and institutional issues and difficulties that beset our education and benefits systems ensure domestic workers have the necessary skills and the will to work before we overlook well trained, motivated, and personable individuals from overseas.

And it will take more than grand and sweeping statements about “Britishness” to resolve these issues in the years to come.