Hay Festival 2012: Britons lack right work attitude, says restaurateur Prue Leith And I think we have to admit that Jamie Oliver is responsible for a lot. He has made it cool to be a cook. Marcus Wareing, the Michelin-starred chef, complained last month about the calibre of people who turned up to work in his kitchens but were not prepared to put the hours in. He said: "If it carries on the way it is there's going to be no future. There's no two ways about it, you put the graft in whether you like it or not. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of British-born workers fell by 208,000 last year while the number of foreigners in jobs here jumped by 212,000 to 4.1million. Foreign nationals make up a growing proportion of the workforce despite unemployment reaching 2.63million in the first quarter of this year. Chris Grayling, the employment minister, said last year it was unacceptable that the sandwich chain Pret à Manger hired almost exclusively foreign workers. He caused further controversy in April when he conceded that foreign-born workers were more attractive to employers because Britons lack "get up and go." A number of employers have questioned the native population's qualifications and willingness to work. Mike Williams, a director of the hotel chain Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, said in March that 60 per cent of the group's 2,300 jobs in the UK were held by foreign nationals because Britons lacked basic skills. Miss Leith was at the Telegraph Hay Festival to discuss her autobiography, Relish - My Life On A Plate, and career. From 2006-10 she was chairman of the School Food Trust, set up to improve the quality of school dinners. She warned that the Government's commitment to parental choice was creating unhealthy children who were allowed to opt out of school meals. "Unless children are taught to like good food, which takes time, it will be a disaster," she said. Children were being sent to school with lunch boxes full of junk food, she added.