Prime Minister David Cameron said the UK was seeing a renaissance in engineering and manufacturing during  a visit to Dyson's Malmesbury HQ this afternoon.

It comes after Sir James Dyson today reiterated that he wants Britain to leave the European Union.

Sir James has pledged to spend £1bn on research and development, committing the money on 100 new products over the next four years, as well as a further £200million towards additional production lines in south-east Asia so that it can increase its manufacturing capacity to 11 million motors a year.

The spending is on top of a previously-announced plan for a £250million campus expansion at its Malmesbury site, creating 3,000 jobs.

Mr Cameron said: “We are seeing a renaissance in British engineering and manufacturing and that’s more people studying it, more people studying it at university, but more people going on to pursue these careers and there’s no doubt that if anything we need more graduate engineers rather than less.

“It starts right back in primary schools; we need to make sure we are teaching maths properly in our primary schools, we also need to teach some of the modern technology like coding which we’re now teaching in primary school because obviously careers in computer engineering are going to be very important in the future.”

Mr Cameron was given a tour of the Malmesbury factory where he met staff and encouraged graduates to return to schools to talk to children about the importance of studying science subjects.

He said: “You have to make sure children are studying good science subjects in secondary schools that more take it on from GCSE to A-level, we need to make sure specifically that more woman study physics and sciences and keep that going after GCSEs.

“You can see from this place here people sometimes think of engineering as lots of men in overalls grabbling with large oily machine, you can see here that engineering has many different aspects to it and we need to get that image across.”

Dyson is currently recruiting 300 people to join its team of more than 2,000 engineers and scientists, while it is also planning to extend its external research programme with universities by another £50million.

Mr Cameron went on to call defections to UKIP ‘self-defeating’ despite host Sir James telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he would be in favour of leaving the EU.

Asked if he wanted to stay in the EU, Sir James said: “Not particularly, no, because I think it's a European Union dominated by Germany and in our particular field we have these large German companies who dominate standard setting and energy reduction committees, and so we get the old guard and old technology supported and not new technology.”

During the visit Mr Cameron revealed that he and his wife Samantha "take turns" with household tasks - with the Prime Minister in charge of making his children's tea tonight.

Mr Cameron said that the couple, who have three children, mainly tackle the chores in their Oxfordshire constituency home and said the family home is equipped with numerous appliances, as Nancy, Elwen and Florence make "quite a lot of mess to clear up".

Mr Cameron was asked by reporters whether he or his wife was responsible for the vacuuming in their household.

"It's a bit of a task, we take these things in turn," Mr Cameron replied. "When we are in the constituency that's where we tend to do that.

"Tonight I have to make the children's tea so you'd better get on and ask me some questions."

The Prime Minister was also asked whether he owned any Dyson products but would not specify whether he did or not.

"There's a range of appliances," Mr Cameron said.

"I won't go into all of the details but there's a lot of appliances because when you've got three children there's quite a lot of mess to clear up."

During the visit, Mr Cameron was shown new Dyson products by Sir James Dyson in his office, including a robot vacuum cleaner. He viewed prototypes of products created by 3D printing and then met engineers in a research laboratory at the factory.

  • Yesterday Labour leader Ed Miliband meet staff from Tetronics International in South Marston as he promoted the Party’s green credentials . The firm is a global leader in the supply of systems to turn waste material into valuable commercial products.