Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am very happy to meet any delegation of business leaders with my hon. Friend. I am not the Minister for rail transport, but I shall certainly refer the issue to the Department for Transport, and I am happy to have the meeting that my hon. Friend requests.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

7. What additional funding for training his Department has provided to support unemployed people and people aged 16 to 24 to get into employment.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We have record numbers participating in apprenticeships, new traineeships, maths and English training, which, with the record number of jobs, have contributed to a 98,000 fall in youth unemployment over the last year. We are simplifying vocational education and today publishing a simple slide showing young people their education options between the ages of 14 and 18.

[Mr Evans]

I have a BAE Systems plant at Samlesbury in my constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) has one in Warton. BAE Systems took on a record number of apprentices last year, giving young people an opportunity to learn new skills to use in highly paid jobs when they are later taken on. What are the Government doing to encourage many more smaller firms to understand that apprenticeships can also benefit them?

[Matthew Hancock]

I pay tribute to the work that BAE Systems does with its apprenticeships. It not only has hundreds of apprentices, many of whom I have met, but offers more and more higher apprenticeships, which provide the very best available training on the job. We have to make sure that smaller businesses get the message that apprenticeships can help them too; in fact, the majority of apprentices are in smaller businesses. We have made the apprenticeship grant for employers focused on smaller businesses to help them with the extra costs they have in taking on apprentices.