Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of (a) the contribution to the public purse of, (b) the funding allocated to and (c) the funding unspent from the apprenticeship levy in the last 12 months.

The apprenticeship levy is collected by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) from all UK employers with a pay bill above £3 million. Monthly receipts data for the apprenticeship levy is published by HMRC in its tax and National Insurance contributions receipts publication which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk.

Between April 2018 and February 2019, £2.5 billion was raised from the levy.

Employers’ levy funds are distinct from the Department for Education’s ring-fenced apprenticeship budget, which is set to fund apprenticeships in England only. The budget has been set in advance by Her Majesty’s Treasury for the current spending review period (to 2019-20). The budget was £2.2 billion for the 2018-19 financial year and it will rise to over £2.5 billion in 2019-20 – double what was spent in 2010. It is used to fund new apprenticeship starts in levy and non-levy paying employers and to cover the ongoing costs of apprentices that are already in training. A detailed breakdown of spending for 2018-19 will be published in the Education and Skills Funding Agency Annual Report and Accounts.

In the 12 months from February 2018 to January 2019, the most recent month for which data are available, £2.36 billion in levy funds were received into employers’ apprenticeship service accounts. These funds are available for employers to use for 24 months before they begin to expire on a rolling, month-by-month basis. In the same time period, a total of £523 million of payments were made from apprenticeship service accounts to cover training costs for learning. This figure does not include other costs, such as incentives and additional payments for disadvantaged apprentices.

We don’t anticipate that all levy-payers will use all the funds in their accounts. Income from the levy is also used to fund apprenticeship training for non-levy paying employers.