A 1.5bn government initiative to improve the skill levels of employees has been heavily criticised by MPs.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee said England's Train to Gain scheme was "mismanaged" since its launch in 2006.

The MPs said the targets set were "unrealistically ambitious", leading to a 150m under-spend in the first two years and then an over-spend of 50m.

The Learning and Skills Council who ran the scheme denied any over-spend, saying budgets had been re-prioritised.

But in a report published on Thursday, the committee said there had been "serious weaknesses" in the way the LSC had managed the scheme, which comes under Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The report acknowledged that the programme had helped 1.4 million learners - about 5% of the workforce - by the summer of last year summer.

But unrealistic targets led to an under-spend of 150m (out of a budget of 747m) in the first two years; the following year, a failure to anticipate increased demand because of the recession led to an overspend of 50m.

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