Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to assess the efficacy of the incentive payments for hiring a new apprentice against a baseline hiring rate.

Apprenticeships will be more important than ever in helping businesses to recruit the right people and develop the skills they need to recover and grow. To help employers offer new apprenticeships, they are now able to claim £2,000 for every new apprentice they hire under the age of 25 before 31 January 2021, in recognition of the particular impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on the employment prospects of this group, and £1,500 for new apprentices aged 25 and over. This is in addition to the existing £1,000 payment we already provide for new 16-18-year-old apprentices and those aged under 25 with an Education, Health and Care Plan.

Employers have been able to register to claim the incentive since 1 September. We are monitoring the take-up of the new payments and will assess their impact on apprenticeship starts, including how employers have used the incentive payments to support job creation through apprenticeships.

As part of the in-year apprenticeship statistics release due to be published on 26 November, we will publish data on the number of apprentices for whom employers have submitted claims for incentive payments.