Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing employers to allocate a fixed proportion of funding raised by the Apprenticeship Levy to cover relocation and accommodation costs for apprentices from low-income households.

We are determined to make sure that people from all backgrounds can benefit from the increased wage and employment prospects that high quality apprenticeships offer. We have made £60 million available to support providers to train apprentices from areas with the highest levels of disadvantage.

The apprenticeship levy is set at a level to fund 3 million high quality apprenticeships in England by 2020. In order to deliver this, funds in an employer’s levy account can only be used towards the cost of approved apprenticeship training and assessment. Employers are able to spend their funds on the apprenticeship training which they judge best meets their needs. As the apprenticeship levy was only introduced in April 2017, we do not plan to introduce further flexibilities on how employers can spend their funds at this time.