Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of removing Government funding for the Union Learning Fund on the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.

It is unlikely that removing our funding will have any significant effect on the Lifetime Skills Guarantee. This is because Unionlearn support is focused on supporting people at Level 2 and below where the existing Adult entitlement provides fully funded Government support for adults without English and Maths at Level 2 or Digital Skills (Level 1). Out of the 200,000 people they help each year, only about 3,000 are undertaking learning at Level 3 or above.

The Lifetime Skills Guarantee is part of the significant £2.5 billion investment in the National Skills Fund. It will offer support to all adults lacking a Level 3 qualification, it will provide digital boot camps to support employers in filling vacancies and a Lifelong Loan Entitlement, which will provide individuals with an entitlement to 4 years of loan funding to use over their lifetime.

As such the Lifelong Learning Guarantee and the National Skills Fund has the capacity to take on any individuals who might have undertaken Level 3 learning with the support of the Union Learning Fund.