Skills crisis? What skills crisis?

The UK is not heading for a tech skills crisis, despite fears to the contrary, according to CIOs and the audience at the silicon.com CIO Forum being held today.

In a live version of silicon.com's popular CIO Jury, a panel of IT chiefs at the event was asked whether a lack of homegrown IT talent is creating a crisis for UK plc.

For the prosecution, TripleIC CEO David Butler, argued that despite the potential for offshoring IT, there is still a need for homegrown talent.

He said: "However many resources we use from overseas we need a nucleus of capabilities... and strategists and technicians to oversee it." But he warned that while young people might understand eBay Facebook and YouTube, they "have no idea that IT has a fundamental strategic role to play in the globalisation of world trade".

Part of the problem is that while once IT was regarded as "dead cool", now tech professionals are seen as geeks, he said.

But for the defence, Rorie Devine, CTO of Betfair said the UK is not facing a crisis - but in fact doing quite well.

He blamed the end of the dot-com boom "in IT attractiveness" for a drop in the number of graduates, and said new technologies make it much easier to integrate teams working around the world. "We have to have a global perspective and see it not as a crisis but as an opportunity," he told the audience.

He added: "There's not a crisis but we can do better because there is a massive opportunity here - we need to be part of that solution and not the problem," and called for a target of 100,000 UK IT graduates every year.

But Chris Broad, head of IM and technology at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, warned that universities need to improve the way they teach tech: "Academia does not understand commercial computing and the generation that does is close to retiring."

He said CIOs and IT directors need to be out and fostering connections, and added: "We have to explain to the talented people that are out there what the career involves and how exciting it can be."

After all the arguments had been put on stage, the Jury - which also included Transport for London Group CIO Phil Pavitt, Dominic Cameron director of technology at lastminute.com and Jane Kimberlin IT director Domino's Pizza - was hung.

The casting vote went to the audience at the event in central London, with 34 per cent saying the lack of homegrown talent is creating a crisis, while 59 per cent said it is not - leaving seven per cent unsure.