Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent progress his Department has made in helping improve digital skills in the workforce.

This Government is committed to improving digital skills in the workforce and creating a strong digital skills talent pool. Recent schemes include working with the Open University to create a free online course ‘Introduction to Cyber Security’, taken up by 70,000 learners, and reformed apprenticeships to provide employers with the digital skills they need in the workforce. From September 2015, 300 degree level digital apprenticesstartedtheir programmes - double what wasoriginallyannounced -providing the digital and professional skills that employers needand value.