Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address a skills shortage in the UK private sector.

The department conducts the Employer Skills Survey, which provides robust assessments of skills shortages across the UK by geography, occupation and by sector. The latest results were published in summer 2018 and are available on GOV.UK, at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/employer-skills-survey-2017-uk-report.

The department also has responsibility for Working Futures which provides 10 year projections of employment by sector, occupation and geography: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-labour-market-projections-2014-to-2024.

We are rolling out Skills Advisory Panels, which will bring together employers, local authorities, universities, colleges and other training providers. These partners will work together to pool their knowledge and expertise and decide what skills are really needed across a sub-region. This will help ensure we match training to the jobs available in the local area.

We are also working with employers to jointly design and deliver policies and programmes, which will make the skills system more responsive to employer needs, while giving individuals the skills they need to succeed.

This includes improving apprenticeships by making them longer, higher quality, and with more off-the job training and proper assessment at the end; introducing T Levels which will offer a high quality and rigorous technical alternative to academic education; and establishing National Colleges and Institutes of Technology to meet higher level technical skills needs. We are also developing a new National Retraining Scheme - an ambitious, far-reaching programme, which will give adults the skills they need to thrive and support employers to adapt as the economy changes.