SHADOW Chancellor Ed Balls heard calls for more school leavers to be guided into industry when he met Bradford engineering bosses at a Silsden factory on Friday.

Mr Balls paid a visit to export success story Advanced Actuators, which makes complex hydraulic machinery used in the gas, oil and nuclear industries around the world and has a multi-million pound turnover.

And during his tour of the shop floor he chatted with Stage 3 apprentices Tom Towers from Baildon and Ollie Wood from Silsden, who are being trained in a scheme linked to Bradford College.

Mr Balls asked if they had been advised at school about the benefits of teaming up with industry at a young age.

"Not particularly, it was really that I decided to do what I was interested in. You learn more by being hands-on and studying at the same time," said Mr Towers, a former Titus Salt School pupil.

Mr Balls urged them both to go back to their schools and pass on their good experiences to current students.

Advanced Actuators managing director Chris Woodhead showed Mr Balls the impressive niche engineering which has secured them international markets, including one £250,000 order bound for China.

The visit was organised by Mike Cartwright of West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, who introduced Mr Balls to local business bosses, including managing directors Steve Pollard, MD of turbo specialist Teconnex, and Peter Longbottom, of West Yorkshire Spinners.

"The skills issue is still the biggest issue for us," Mr Pollard told the Shadow Chancellor, adding they had recently failed to fill two apprenticeship vacancies.

"We are getting there, but it seems students are encouraged by schools to either go straight to work or on to university.

"It's frustrating for us as we all want to pick them off at 16 - there's some really bright kid out there who could be earning while they're learning," Mr Pollard said.

Mr Balls said he was hugely impressed by the niche success of local engineering firms and promised that if Labour took charge after the election there would be more help for both finance and export for such expertise.

"After the squeeze, you, the one who are left are the strongest business," Mr Balls told the table of bosses.

"The key to these businesses success is innovation.

"Manufacturing in Britain can succeed, but it’s not going to be by competing with China or India to do mass production at low cost.

"The way is to be steps ahead of the competition all the time, not to sit on one's laurels for five years, because by then someone will be doing the same as you - only cheaper.

"Small companies like these are really good at doing that because they are flexible and can keep innovating," Mr Balls said.

Mr Woodhead said he was pleased with Mr Balls' approach.

"If he delivered the intentions he's laid down, then that would be a real boon - education, export, development," he said.

Mr Cartwright said: "We are making great strides in Bradford and the enthusiasm of small and medium business such as Advanced Actuators is infectious."