Gordon Marsden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2016-03-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of the potential number of large employers who will require existing training expenditure as a result of the introduction of the apprenticeship levy.

Nick Boles

The Government is committed to significantly increasing the quantity and quality of apprenticeships in England to 3 million new starts by 2020.

Overall, there has been a steady decline in the amount and quality of training undertaken by employers over the last 20 years. This has been bad for productivity.

We need a step change to reverse these trends and secure a high quality, sustainable apprenticeship programme, which is why we are introducing a levy on larger employers.

The introduction of the apprenticeship levy will put employers in control of funding and incentivise them to train more apprentices. Large employers can potentially get out more than they put into the levy and will therefore have greater reward if they invest significantly in training their workforce.

We are working closely with employers on the details of the design of the apprenticeship levy in preparation for its launch in April 2017.