London needs faster internet, says former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

London will lose crucial jobs and growth if it fails to fix “the enormous number of buildings” without fast broadband, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warns today.

In an exclusive interview the media magnate said the Government had to ensure the capital’s firms have access to the speediest internet connection.

He also said UK schools “leave a lot of kids behind” and that the British people should accept the country needs “a lot of immigration” to have a successful economic future.

His comments follow a study finding the capital’s tech sector will deliver a £12 billion economic boost and 46,000 jobs over the next 10 years.

But Mr Bloomberg said London had to solve problems in order to secure continuing tech sector growth.

Research commissioned by one of Mr Bloomberg’s organisations highlighted internet speed, education, immigration and venture capital as areas needing attention.

He said a study showed that “in the downtown central part of London there’s an enormous amount of buildings without high speed communications. In today’s world that’s almost as important as water and electricity. You have to have it.”

Mr Bloomberg said that when he was New York’s mayor his administration rated buildings on internet speed and set out guidelines on how landlords could improve it. He also said he worked closely with the private sector to ensure high-speed cable reached where it needed to go, and said without it “you don’t have the number of jobs.It is up to the landlord to pay for bringing fibre into the building, but it’s up to the Government to give the cable companies the permission to run the fibre down the street.”

Employees with the skills to work in the tech sector will be critical to London’s success, he said. But he argued that the UK education system was failing to help enough youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds get the right skills.

He said: “I don’t think there’s any question that both the United States system and the British system leave a lot of kids behind and we have to do something to improve education.

“Having said that there are some phenomenally great universities here and in the United States.We are educating the Nobel Prize winners — the best and the brightest. Are we doing enough for the average person? I think it’s fair to say ‘no’.”

Mr Bloomberg said immigration was also critical to providing the workers, entrepreneurs and investment needed for the tech sector to grow. He hit out at “xenophobia” and said immigrants by their very nature were more likely to be “hard-working and willing to take risks”. Despite Ukip’s rise, he claimed that without immigration “the people who have lived here for centuries are not going to have a future.”