Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department made before the introduction of the apprenticeship levy of the (a) proportion of apprenticeship levy funds that employers would use, (b) number of apprenticeships that would be delivered and (c) amount of employer apprenticeship levy funds that would be unspent between 2017 and 2019; and if he will make a statement.

In forecasts made before the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, it was anticipated that employers would use 13% of the levy funds available to them in the 2017-18 financial year. Data from the apprenticeship service show that employers used 9% (£191m) of the funds available to them in 2017-18.

Our annual budgets for the current Spending Review period (to the end of the 2019-20 financial year) were set to fund 3 million high quality apprenticeship starts by 2020, based on the mix of training levels and subjects that we expected employers to choose.

The apprenticeship levy helps to fund all apprenticeships for levy and non levy-paying employers. At the time that the levy was introduced, it was anticipated that a proportion of levy funds would remain unspent by employers. We have anticipated that employers will not use all the funds available to them, though they are able to.

The annual apprenticeships budget, set in advance by HM Treasury, is not dependent on levy receipts and must fund all learners in the system. When allocating this budget to fund apprenticeships, we included sufficient flexibility to accommodate variations in the level of employer demand.