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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when his Department plans to publish a response to his Department's consultation, A dual mandate for adult vocational education, which closed in June 2015.

The Dual Mandate for adult vocational education was published by the previous Government. Since the election of the new Government there have been a number of significant developments including: the commitment to 3 million apprenticeship starts between 2015 and 2020; the announcement of a levy to fund apprenticeships; the new Institute of Apprenticeships; the commission to Lord Sainsbury to review routes to employment; devolution of adult education funding and responsibilities to combined authorities; commitment to Institutes of Technology; the launch of area reviews; a spending review which has protected adult education from further cuts.

Taken together these amount to a sea change in the Government approach to Professional and Technical Education and associated landscape. We have used the responses to the Dual Mandate to shape our thinking and will continue to do so.