Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much of the public funding allocated for traineeships in (a) 2019-20 and (b) 2020-21 was returned to the Treasury due to being unspent.

In 2019-20, the department did not return any funding allocated for traineeships to Her Majesty's Treasury (HMT). In 2020-21, an underspend of £65 million was returned to HMT. This was because of the time involved in running a procurement to increase training provider capacity and the lag between providers developing their offer and engaging with potential employers and young people to mobilise delivery. Our procurement enabled additional money to reach 81 training providers of which 53 were new to the market. Traineeships starts increased by 44% in the 2020/21 academic year compared to 2019/20.

As is usual practice, any underspends in overall departmental budgets by the end of the financial year are first returned to HMT as per the Consolidated Budgeting Guidance.

We are supporting the largest-ever expansion of traineeships as part of the government’s Plan for Jobs to ensure that more young people have access to high-quality training. At Spending Review, we announced funding for up to 72,000 traineeships starts over the next 3 years. We have also extended the £1,000 incentive payments for offering traineeship work placement opportunities until 31 July 2022. We are continuing to support the further expansion of traineeships, and are working closely with employers, providers and key intermediaries to grow the programme.