Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to reform the apprenticeship levy to allow it to be used to support different forms of training.

The Department for Education is responsible for apprenticeships policy in England only.

The apprenticeship levy is collected by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs from all UK employers with a pay bill above £3 million. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland receive a share of levy funding and it is the responsibility of the devolved administrations to determine how they spend this share to fund and operate their apprenticeship programmes.

The apprenticeship levy underpins our reforms in England to raise apprenticeship quality and support employers to make a long-term, sustainable investment in the skills that they need to grow. Employers are able to use their levy funds to access high-quality apprenticeship training and assessment. We currently have no plans to review what apprenticeship levy funds can be spent on.

We have set out our plans to improve the working of the apprenticeship levy in England in our Skills for Jobs white paper. We are making apprenticeships more flexible so that they work better for employers from all sectors, and we are enabling large employers to make greater use of their levy funds by improving and simplifying the process of transferring funds to other employers, including small employers who do not pay the levy.