Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what amount of expired Apprenticeship Levy funding has been reclaimed from each NHS foundation trust in the East of England.

As the NHS is made up of a large number of diverse employers, it is not possible to identify the amount of expired apprenticeship levy funds for the NHS in England as a whole. This information is therefore not held centrally.

Moreover, due to taxpayer confidentiality, we are unable to publish the amount that individual employers, including individual NHS Trusts, have contributed through the apprenticeship levy or the amount of funds that have been spent or have expired.

The funds in apprenticeship service accounts are available for levy-paying employers to use for 24 months before they begin to expire on a rolling, month-by-month basis.

Employers can choose which apprenticeships they offer, how many apprenticeships they offer and when they offer the apprenticeships. We do not anticipate that all employers who pay the levy will need or want to use all the funds available to them, but they are able to do so if they wish. Funds raised by the levy are used to support the whole apprenticeship system. This means that employers’ unused funds are not lost but are used to support apprenticeships in smaller employers and to cover the ongoing costs of apprentices already in training.

As we set out in the Spending Review, we will again be making available £2.5 billion for investment in apprenticeships in the 2021-22 financial year, which is double that spent in the 2010-11 financial year.

We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, employers and stakeholders to make sure the NHS is fully supported to recruit the apprentices it needs to deliver high-quality care. There are 74 high-quality apprenticeship standards in the health and science sector, including a complete nursing apprentice pathway from entry-level through to postgraduate level.