Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his ingenuity in pursuing that constituency case, about which we have corresponded. Just as he was with the Pfizer case at Sandwich, he is a persistent hon. Member and I congratulate him on that. However, we believe that if we were to take the ingenious approach he proposes, it might mean that the 10,000 undergraduates currently benefiting from financial support lose it.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

18. What assessment he has made of the difficulties faced by apprentices aged 19 and over in obtaining adequate funding for level 3 qualifications.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

The Government are investing significantly in adult apprenticeships, with earmarked investment of £679 million in 2011-12. We rely on employers coming forward to make places available and many more are doing so every day, week and month. There were 114,900 starts in 2010-11—nearly twice as many as in the previous year—for those aged over 19.

[Mr Stuart]

The Minister not only champions apprenticeships but facilitates their delivery and I congratulate him on that. May I ask him to consider introducing a flexible three-year contract for young apprenticeships, with a break clause after year 2, so that there is an equalisation of funding for young apprenticeships on courses both before and after their 19th birthdays?

[Mr Hayes]

Knowing my hon. Friend’s expertise and commitment to this subject, when I saw his question I spoke to my officials and got an interesting response from them. I think that if we better estimate at the outset people’s prospects of progression, we may well be able to take account of what my hon. Friend says. I invite him, as I did earlier, to come to the Department to talk that through and to see what changes we can make to remove any disincentives of the kind to which he refers.