Gordon Marsden
Main Page: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)Department Debates - View all Gordon Marsden's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Nick Boles
The apprenticeship levy will apply to all employers throughout the United Kingdom with a payroll bill of more than £3 million. Of course, there is absolutely nothing to prevent any employer in Scotland that is paying the levy from putting pressure on whoever is in government in Scotland after this Thursday to make sure that they increase their investment in apprenticeships, as we are doing in England.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
Tucked away in the autumn statement was the Government’s admission that they will be cutting—their term is “efficiencies”—£360 million of adult skills non-apprenticeship funding between now and 2020. Does the Minister not see that there is a paradox in the Government going hell for leather on English and maths for young people’s apprenticeships while failing to ring-fence funding for basic skills, when England has 9 million people of working age with low literacy and numeracy, and we are ranked bottom in literacy and next-to-bottom in numeracy among 23 developed nations? Last year, the Government cut the adult skills budget across England by 18%. Now they have scrapped plans for advanced post-24 skills. Why is the Government’s key White Paper addressing technical skills shortages being delayed? Is all this a strategy or a wing and a prayer?