RECESS means local visits – and a quick family holiday in Cornwall with the children.

The weather was kind, the walks as spectacular as ever and beach kit has changed out of all proportion fromwhen Iwas a child, withwhole families now clad in gorgeous neoprene wetsuits for body-boarding excursions whereas we braved the waves clad only in swimsuits.

Strangely, I don’t remember the waves being unbearably cold – perhaps we were hardier then.

Cornwall is heaving with visitors with the result that there aremany seasonal jobs on offer and it is heartening to see that many of these have been taken by people from the UK who have left their cities for a season (or in some cases for good) and moved to where the work is.

Although these are not long-termjobs, they are, as one woman from Birmingham said, “a lot better than sitting on benefits in the middle of town – and my two-year-old loves it too”.

Even three years ago almost all the temporary jobs would have been filled with foreign workers and this is a small but significant local sign that our changes in immigration policy and the refocusing of the welfare system are starting to have an effect, and the national statistics bear this out.

Of the 3.1million new jobs created between 1997 and 2010, a shocking 2.3 million jobs went to foreign-born workers. Now that situation has reversed, with almost two-thirds of new jobs created in the last year going to British workers.

With the economy now in a period of sustainable growth, new jobs will continue to flow although we still have some serious shortages across the UK, especially for maths and science graduates.

For me, it is a matter of national urgency that we fill these gaps with “home-grown” talent.