Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which employers have been allocated funding from the apprenticeship levy for the provision of the senior investment-commercial banking professional apprenticeship standard in each year since 2018; and how much funding was allocated to each of those employers.

Since the introduction of the levy in April 2017, there have been 196 starts on the senior investment-commercial banking professional apprenticeships standard (this standard was approved for delivery in May 2018).

14 organisations are using the levy funds in their apprenticeship service accounts for this training. We are unable to provide names of specific organisations due to taxpayer confidentiality.

This amounts to a full cost commitment of £3.5 million, which is based on learners completing the course. The estimated actual costs to date are £0.7 million (£0.3 million in the 2018-19 academic year and £0.4 million in the 2019-20 academic year to date).

We have published the expenditure on apprenticeships training for the 2018-19 financial year (£1.7 billion). We will publish the expenditure for the 2019-20 financial year through the annual report and accounts which will be laid before Parliament in summer 2020.

We are listening to the concerns of businesses about the apprenticeship levy and are committed to making sure the apprenticeship programme continues to provide opportunities for people of all backgrounds, whilst meeting the needs of employers of all sizes and delivering for the

economy more broadly.