Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment has he made of trends in the level of skills shortages in sectors of strategic importance across the UK economy.

We know that a lack of access to skills is one among a number of possible barriers preventing employers from being able to access the workforce they need, alongside others such as pay, progression opportunities or working conditions.

Where there is a genuine skills shortage affecting a key sector, the Department for Education will work with partners in industry and across government to take action. For example, we are delivering training to become an HGV Driver to 11,000 people via new Skills Bootcamps, as part of a wider package which also includes increasing testing capacity to help more people get out onto the road more quickly.

To help inform government and industry action, we gather data through different sources, including the Employer Skills Survey. The most recent version of this survey highlighted skills shortages in construction and manufacturing, where 36% of vacancies were proving hard to fill because of applicants lacking the appropriate skills, qualifications or experience (compared to an average of 24%). We are helping employers to address these shortages through our programme of skills reforms, which is leading to a growing number of new apprenticeship starts, the creation of new Skills Bootcamps up and down the country, and the introduction of new T Levels to help more young people get the technical skills they need to thrive in the world of work.

We are also drawing on analysis undertaken by groups and organisations including Construction Industry Training Board, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board and the Green Jobs Taskforce, which point, for example, to the need for 35,000 heat pump installers to be trained by 2028. We are working with industry to address these gaps through the Construction Skills Delivery Group and, in 2022, a new cross-cutting delivery group on green jobs.