Dan Jarvis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-02-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what proportion of the apprentices employed by his Department in the last 12 months were women.

Joseph Johnson

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Apprentices are part of the Civil Service Fasttrack Apprenticeship programme. The programme is managed by Civil Service Resourcing (CSR) who recruit apprentices to the programme and then allocate them to the Department. Recruitment of individual apprentices is not managed by the Department. A total of 18 apprentices were allocated to BIS in the latest recruitment round, out of a total of 684 recommended for appointment. 26% of apprentices allocated to BIS in the last 12 months were female. The figure is 40.6% for apprentices recommended for appointment in the wider apprenticeship programme. CSR have a comprehensive diversity and inclusion outreach programme supporting the Fasttrack Apprenticeship programme.

BIS is committed to equal opportunities. 49% of BIS staff are female.