Apprenticeships: Levy

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord is quite right that although the apprenticeships programme is a major one for us, it sits alongside other programmes. He will know that we announced in our industrial strategy in November 2017 that we wanted to up the progress, covering technical education. For example, we are investing an additional £406 million in maths, digital and technical education to address the shortage of science, technology, engineering and maths. This is a complementary programme.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will know that the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that a fifth of employers and a third of SMEs are writing off the levy as a tax, rather than investing it into apprenticeships. Will the Government consider extending the deadline for spending the apprenticeship levy from 24 months to 36 months, to give sufficient time to develop new and more rigorous apprenticeship standards?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We have already extended it from 18 months to 24 months and we think that that is fine. We are seeing strong signs that it is picking up, with the employers buying into the system. We always said that it would take some time, as I think the noble Lord knows. For example, we are seeing vacancies up and that is very encouraging.