Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much the Government plans to spend on health and social care apprenticeships in each of the next five years.

The new Apprenticeship Levy comes into operation in April 2017 and is set at a rate of 0.5% of an employer’s pay bill. Apprenticeship Levy contributions by National Health Service organisations are estimated as £200 million in 2017-18 and will change over the next five years as the NHS pay bill changes. Estimates are not available for social care.

Apprentices are employed and individual employers will decide which apprentices to employ to meet their workforce needs. The Department does not centrally collect the plans of how many apprentices each individual employer intends to recruit by the end of 2020.

The Department is working with a range of partner organisations, including Health Education England, NHS Improvement, Skills for Health and Skills for Care to ensure NHS and social care providers have access to the apprentice standards they need to develop their own workforce and to make full use of the apprentice levy.