Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what role the UK Commission for Employment and Skills will have in 2016 in monitoring or contributing to the programmes to increase the number of apprenticeships and traineeships set out in his Department's document, English Apprenticeships: Our 2020 Vision, published in December 2015.

UKCES’s main support for the Department in respect of English Apprenticeships in 2016 is its ongoing work to map the new apprenticeship standards against frameworks and Standard Occupational Classification codes to help identify the remaining gaps in standards coverage.

As announced in the 2015 Spending Review, in order to prioritise funding to allow the core adult skills participation budgets to be protected in cash terms, Whitehall Departments will be withdrawing their funding for UKCES during 2016-17. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is working with UKCES and other stakeholders to manage the implications of this decision.