Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to enhance information on career opportunities for students considering project management degree apprenticeships, particularly given the needs arising from the net zero and levelling up agendas.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Employers have designed over 155 high-quality degree level apprenticeship standards, including in project management, to support the development of the skilled workforces they need. In the 2021/22 academic year, there were 590 starts on the Level 6 Project Manager degree apprenticeship, up from 140 starts in the 2018/19 academic year.
The department would like to see even more people benefit from the high-quality career opportunities that degree level apprenticeships provide and are taking steps to ensure that young people can access these opportunities more easily.
In addition to the department's Find an Apprenticeship service, which allows people to search and apply for apprenticeship vacancies, the department continues to work with employers to produce the biannual higher and degree level apprenticeship vacancy listing. The latest listing, published during National Apprenticeship Week, features over 300 vacancies across the country that are available to apply to in 2023. These vacancies are also being promoted to students through our Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme.
The ASK programme provides free resources in schools and colleges to ensure that students, parents, and teachers are aware of apprenticeships – including degree apprenticeships. The programme is supported by £3.2 million of funding per year and has worked with 5,000 schools, reaching over 1.7 million students and over 230,000 parents.
UCAS is also expanding its apprenticeships service, so that young people can see relevant apprenticeship vacancies on the UCAS hub, including degree apprenticeships. They are also working with the department to ensure that from 2024, students will be able to apply for apprenticeships alongside an undergraduate degree application. This means thousands more young people will benefit from a wider choice of high-quality options, and employers can benefit from better access to talent on UCAS.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the relationship between the fall in the Apprenticeship Levy fee and the fall in the number of new apprenticeship starts; and whether they plan to reintroduce the £3,000 amount for all age groups.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government’s apprentice incentive payments of up to £3,000 have helped employers of all sizes to build back from the COVID-19 pandemic more successfully, supporting over 195,000 new apprentices into work between 1 August 2020 and 31 January 2022, 77% of which were apprentices under the age of 25.
The apprenticeship incentive payments were introduced as part of the government’s Plan for Jobs in 2020, in recognition of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on business, and to support employers to recruit the right people and develop the skills they needed to recover and grow. The department has no current plan to reintroduce the incentive scheme, but continues to support employers with the cost of apprenticeship training.
The government is increasing funding for apprenticeships to £2.7 billion by the 2024/25 financial year to support more employers to offer new apprenticeship opportunities. As part of this, the department continues to provide £1,000 payments to both employers and training providers when they take on apprentices aged under 19 or from the ages of 19 to 24, who have an education, health and care plan, or have been in care.
The government contributes 95% of the cost of apprenticeship training for small-to-medium sized enterprises who do not pay the apprenticeship levy for up to 10 apprentices a year, and funds 100% of the training costs for the smallest employers when they take on apprentices aged 16 to 18.
The department continues to monitor the level of apprenticeship starts and completions and publishes this information at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/apprenticeships-and-traineeships. Between August and November 2022, there have been 155,900 apprenticeship starts.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, given that over £600 million of unused Apprenticeship Levy funding has been returned to the Treasury, when they intend to review that levy.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The apprenticeship levy is an important part of the government’s reforms to create a high-quality, employer-led apprenticeships system, and it supports employers of all sizes to invest in high-quality apprenticeship training. The government does not currently have any plans to review the apprenticeship levy.
Whilst the department has seen some underspends in the apprenticeships budget in previous years, this will not always be the case. In the 2021/22 financial year the total spend on apprenticeships was £2,455 million against the budget of £2,466 million, meaning that 99.6% of the apprenticeships budget was spent. It is therefore important that the apprenticeships budget remains ring-fenced to support the demand from employers for high-quality apprenticeships training.
The government is increasing apprenticeship funding to £2.7 billion by the 2024/25 financial year and is continuing to improve the apprenticeships system to support more employers and apprentices to benefit from apprenticeships. The department has created flexible training models, like flexi-job and accelerated apprenticeships, to make apprenticeships accessible for all sectors. We have also improved the transfer system to make it easier for levy paying employers to find other employers who wish to take on new apprentices with transferred funds. Additionally, we are working with training providers to simplify the apprenticeship system through our “You said, we did” programme.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of Local Housing Allowance rates on the supply of affordable housing.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
I refer the noble Lady to the answer to Question UIN to 117908 (attached) on 16 January.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the impact of freezing Local Housing Allowance rates on expenditure by local authorities on temporary accommodation for those unable to sustain their private tenancies.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The causes of homelessness are complex, and it is driven by a range of factors including changes to household income. The Government is committed to preventing homelessness where possible. We have announced the allocation of £654 million in funding through the Homelessness Prevention Grant that will be made available to local authorities in 2023/24 and 2024/25. This investment builds on the £366 million in funding already available to local authorities through the Homelessness Prevention Grant for 2022/23.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to review and simplify processes for large employers to assist smaller employers in enabling more young people to access employment opportunities in the green or technology markets.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Through the Green Jobs Delivery Group, the Government is working with industry to evaluate entry routes into green careers for young people.
Flexible training models mean apprenticeships are accessible for all sectors, with ‘career starter’ standards in place to attract more young people.
Local Skills Improvement Plans will embed greater employer engagement in local skills systems in ways that bring the demand and supply sides more closely together and enable a more coherent “whole system” approach to skills planning including in green industries.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many illegal migrants have (1) breached their tagging conditions, and (2) are awaiting court proceedings as a result.
Answered by Lord Murray of Blidworth
A pilot was launched on 15 June 2022 with the purpose of establishing whether electronic monitoring is an effective way to improve and maintain regular contact management with asylum claimants who arrive in the UK via unnecessary and dangerous routes, in order to progress their immigration case.
There are no cases awaiting court proceedings.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that (1) food production is placed at the heart of wider government policies, and (2) domestic food production does not diminish.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Food supply is one of the UK's 13 Critical National Infrastructure sectors. Defra and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are joint Lead Government Departments (LGDs), with Defra leading on supply and the FSA on food safety. As such we work closely with the Cabinet Office and other LGDs ensuring food supply is fully incorporated as part of emergency preparedness, including consideration of dependencies on other sectors.
The Government Food Strategy was published in June 2022 setting out a plan to transform our food system to ensure it is fit for the future. The Food Strategy is a cross-departmental strategy. Therefore, Defra actively collaborated with and engaged with other Government departments in its development.
Responding to recent events, the Food Strategy puts food security at the heart of the government’s vision for the food sector. It included a commitment to broadly maintain the current level of food that we produce domestically and boost production in sectors where there are the biggest opportunities.
Setting this commitment demonstrates that we recognise the critical importance of domestic food production and the role that it plays in our food security. Domestic production figures have been very stable for most of this century. We produce 61% of all the food we need, and 74% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year, and these figures have changed little over the last 20 years.
Food production is the primary purpose of farming and always will be. Our agricultural reforms in England aim to support a highly productive food producing sector, meeting our commitment to broadly maintain food production, alongside environmental improvements that benefit us all such as improving water quality and species abundance.
Balancing and integrating food production with our environmental land management will support an efficient and sustainable land use without offshoring harms associated with lower production standards. We have a legal duty to assess the impact of all environmental land management schemes, such as Sustainable Farming Incentive and Landscape Recovery, on food production.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have (1) to publish an analysis of the responses to their Call for Evidence on the Fur Market in Great Britain, and (2) to ban the import and sale of fur in Great Britain.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are carefully reviewing the evidence gathered both from our Call for Evidence and wider engagement with the fur trade and stakeholders, and a summary of responses will be published in due course.
We will use the evidence gathered to inform any future action on the fur trade in Great Britain, in line with HM Government’s commitment to improving animal welfare standards.
Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to secure tariff-free movement of steel from the UK to Northern Ireland, given the recent application of tariff on such movements.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Lainston - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
In January 2021, the Government implemented measures to ensure UK traders could move steel products captured by the EU’s steel safeguard quota, tariff-free, to Northern Ireland while the quota was open. Since July 2022, the quota for certain steel product categories has been filling up rapidly due to changes to the quota allocation by the EU. Where a tariff is due, traders may be able to use the Customs Duty Waiver Scheme.
The Government continues to engage with the EU to find a solution to ensure that trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland can take place without undue disruption.