Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many businesses in (a) St Helens North constituency and (b) the North West hired apprentices in each of the last five years.

The most recent statistics on the total number of businesses with apprenticeship starts for the academic years 2012/13 to 2016/17 are published on GOV.UK and are available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/750709/apprenticeship_starts_tables.xlsx.

Data on the number of businesses with apprenticeship starts at a national level is provided in table 8A. We do not provide regional or constituency breakdowns of this data.