Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to encourage young people to enter the transport industry.

The Department for Transport is leading efforts to promote training and career opportunities for young people in the transport sector. This will help ensure we can deliver the huge investment we are making in our transport system and help build the skilled workforce for the coming decades. Some of the steps we are taking include:

• Continuing to work with the Department for Education to ensure that Adult Education policy and Further Education reform proposals reflect the needs of the transport industry, and will work with our stakeholders to use the Department for Work and Pensions Kickstart scheme.

• Supporting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activity including by being a founding signatory of the Department for Educations ‘Tomorrow’s Engineers Code’, which aims to increase and support the number of young people taking up STEM subjects, making careers in engineering accessible and a reality for future generations.

In the coming months we also plan to publish a Transport Labour Market and Skills Discussion Paper. This will set out the labour market and skills challenges and opportunities for the transport sector post Covid and how we plan to build a pipeline of talent for the future. We will use this as the basis of consultation with industry and other stakeholders to find out what more we can do to make progress in this vital area.