Government attempts to revive Britain's manufacturing sector are unlikely to succeed, a report claimed on Tuesday.

The Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that manufacturing will shrink to 10 per cent of UK GDP by 2050 if growth and productivity increased by their 20-year averages.

As a result, it argued that current spending on business support schemes by the Department for Trade and Industry lacked evaluation and therefore did not represent good value for money for the taxpayer.

Instead, the authors recommended that the existing corporation tax regime must be maintained to assist the recovery of business investment, while the age limit on manufacturing sector Modern Apprenticeships should be lifted.

Companies should be assisted in planning their training needs, rather than encouraged to increase their levels of employee training.

"There is no simple 10-point plan for manufacturing," said Richard Brooks, economics research fellow at the IPPR.

"Instead the government needs to maintain macroeconomic stability and match it with a period of microeconomic policy stability.

"This will provide businesses with more certainty about their environment and will allow for quality evaluation of existing government policies."

The study says that the evaluation of support schemes for investment, innovation and enterprise is "rarely performed in a rigorous and independent manner".

"This means we cannot be sure whether such spending represents value for money, whether the pattern of current spending is appropriate, or whether we should be spending more or less overall on such initiatives," it adds.

"The DTI's ongoing review of business support must address these issues."