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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps his Department is taking to improve the apprenticeship completion rate of disabled young people.

Ensuring that apprentices have transferable skills and can progress their career will all help encourage people to complete their apprenticeship.

We encourage the use of a range of available reasonable adjustments so during their learning and at assessment, apprentices with disabilities can demonstrate what they know and can do. Reasonable adjustments include access arrangements such as extra time, use of speech recognition technology, a reader, a sign language interpreter, modified papers (braille, enlarged text).

A Taskforce, led by my hon Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), has been asked to look at issues around apprenticeships for people with learning difficulties. The Taskforce is currently considering its recommendations.

Our far-reaching reforms will further improve the quality of apprenticeships and ensure delivery of the high quality relevant training expected by both employers and apprentices.