Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to ensure that adults who need training and skills development are supported as covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased.

It will be important that adults who are returning to learning get the skills and development they need.

We have already invested £100 million to develop a National Retraining Scheme to support working adults prepare for future changes to the economy and to help them retrain into better jobs and announced an extra £2.5 billion, over the course of this Parliament, for a new National Skills Fund, which will support people to learn new skills and prepare for the economy of the future.

In April we launched the “Skills Toolkit” – a new online platform giving people access to free, high-quality digital and numeracy courses to help build up their skills, progress in work and boost their job prospects.

Apprenticeships will be key to the recovery, helping both young people and those wanting to re-train, and we are looking at ensuring that we support employers, especially small businesses, to take on new apprentices this year and will provide further detail in due course.

The department is also exploring further options for how to boost skills to help the labour market recover from the economic effects of COVID-19.

There are a range of further and higher education opportunities open to young people leaving education this summer. In addition, we want to work with employers to ensure that young people have access to an offer of work-based training, work experience, and/or training programmes. My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minster, announced this on 29 June.