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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he plans to take to involve small and medium-sized enterprises in the proposed digital apprenticeship system.

We are developing the digital apprenticeship service to support apprenticeships in England. It will help all employers to select an apprenticeship framework or standard, choose a training provider, choose an assessment organisation and post apprenticeship vacancies. By 2020, all employers will be able to use the service to pay for training and assessment for apprenticeships and we will help smaller employers to prepare for this.

We continue to work with a wide range of employers to develop, test and improve the digital apprenticeship service.