Speaking on a Federation of Master Builders (FMB) podcast, Cleverly said that the UK has lost its “respect for skillfulness" as a result of changing attitudes around careers.

“One of the problems with politics is everybody wants to be an architect. No one wants to be a builder,” said Cleverly.

“Bright ideas are really, really good but someone’s got to put them into practice.

“If we don’t recognise and reward the people that get stuff done, all that ends up happening is we talk about getting stuff done but don’t get anything done.”

Elsewhere, the shadow housing secretary took aim at the Labour government’s 1.5 million housing delivery target, describing it as “nonsense” and argued it was more complex than this.

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As such, he argued there is more that needs to be done to support housing with regard to finance access, skilled labour and cost of materials.

“If you’re not looking at all of those things, shouting about numbers is just basically a way of looking tough and that’s not what we need at the moment,” he added.

Brian Berry, CEO at the FMB, added: “It was fantastic to have Sir James on the podcast to share his knowledge of the sector and discuss issues affecting our members.

“The shadow housing secretary has identified the right problems: a skills crisis rooted in decades of undervaluing trades, a housing target that no one in the industry believes is deliverable and a tax and regulatory environment that is squeezing small building firms, like our members out of business.”