Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what additional training provision and schemes his Department plans to put in place to support job losses arising as a consequence of the national living wage.
Nick Boles
The 2015 spending review made provision for a major expansion of adult further education, to increase employment and productivity levels.
The Government has maintained funding for the core adult skills participation budgets in cash terms at £1.5bn and is also increasing opportunities in technical and professional education by doubling the level of spending on apprenticeships by 2019-20 in 2010-11 cash terms, including income from the new apprenticeship levy. It will be almost £900 million higher in 2019-20 than in 2015-16. By 2019-20, spending on apprenticeships in England will be £2.5 billion.
The combination of the levy, the protection of the AEB, the extension of advanced learner loans, and the introduction of the youth obligation means that by the end of the Parliament, the cash value of core adult FE funding to support participation will be at its highest ever. The total spending power of the FE sector to support participation will be £3.41bn by 2019-20, which is a cash terms increase of 40% compared with 2015-16 (real terms 30%).
