Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much the UK spent as a proportion of GDP on in-work training for 2017-18; and how that figure compares to the average spends within the (a) G7 and (b) EU.

The Employer Skills Survey 2017, published in August 2018, states that UK employer expenditure on training and development in 2017 was £44.2bn, which represented approximately 2.2% of GDP.

The primary government support for in-work training is the Apprenticeship Programme, which is funded by a 0.5% levy on all UK businesses with a wage bill over £3m each year. In 2017/18, the levy raised around £2.6bn, which was made available to the Department for Education to fund apprenticeships and skills training in England, and the devolved administrations, who received their share of the levy in the normal way to spend on their priorities.

HM Treasury does not collect or hold direct international comparisons for these statistics.