Apprenticeships provide people with the opportunity to earn and learn the skills needed to start an exciting career in a wide range of industries, everything from artificial intelligence, archaeology, data science, business management and banking. We want more young people to benefit from high-quality apprenticeships.

To encourage more young people to consider apprenticeships, we are promoting apprenticeships in schools and colleges through our Apprenticeship Support & Knowledge programme. This free service provides resources and interventions to help better educate young people about apprenticeships and has reached over 2 million students across England since its introduction in the 2016/17 academic year.

In January 2021, we announced the introduction of a three-point plan to enforce provider access legislation. This requires that all maintained schools and academies provide opportunities for providers of technical education and apprenticeships to visit schools for the purpose of informing year 8-13 pupils about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships. This plan includes creating clear minimum legal requirements, specifying who is to be given access to which pupils and when. This is an important step towards real choice for every pupil.

The National Careers Service, a free, government-funded careers information, advice and guidance service draws on a range of labour market information to support and guide individuals. The National Careers Service is impartial, and careers guidance is tailored to individual needs. Young people aged 13 to 18 can access ongoing in-depth information, advice and guidance from the service via a helpline, webchat or the National Careers Service website.

In February during National Apprenticeship Week, I wrote to all year 11, 12 and 13 pupils and their parents to tell them about the great opportunities offered through apprenticeships.

We offer guidance and support to young people who are considering applying for apprenticeships through our apprenticeship website: https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/, which explains the application stages in a step-by-step process. Students can search for new apprenticeship opportunities on our Find an Apprenticeship (FAA) service, over 19,000 apprenticeship vacancies were advertised on the FAA service in November 2021, details of which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship.

To ensure that young people consider technical options alongside the academic pathway, the government introduced a provider access law in January 2018. This requires all maintained schools and academies to publish a policy statement setting out opportunities for providers of technical education, including apprenticeships, to access year 8-13 pupils, and to make sure that the statement is followed. Through the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, we are aiming to strengthen the law and create a clear minimum legal requirement for provider encounters.

The government’s careers statutory guidance sets out that all schools and colleges should use the internationally recognised Gatsby Benchmarks to help meet their legal duties and improve their careers provision. In addition to encounters with further and higher education, the Gatsby Benchmarks define other elements of an excellent careers programme, including encounters with employers, experiences of workplaces and personal guidance.

To support this, we are investing £29.6 million to help schools and colleges to improve their careers programmes for young people. This includes £28 million for The Careers and Enterprise Company to deliver support to schools and colleges to implement the Gatsby Benchmarks, including Careers Hubs and Careers Leader training. Young people aged 13 to 18 are able to access ongoing in-depth information, advice and guidance from the National Careers Service via local telephone-based advisers or the National Careers Service website.

Increasing exposure to technical options is vital so that young people can make fully informed choices about their future. New analysis found that uptake of apprenticeships was 16% higher in the schools that provided information on apprenticeships to most or all of their students compared with the schools that provided information to a small minority.

The Government published a call for evidence on raising standards in the tax advice market in March 2020. This explored a range of options to raise standards, including requiring all tax advisers to belong to a professional body. Responses to the call for evidence, including the response from the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), were carefully considered. A summary of responses and the Government’s proposed next steps were published in November 2020.

Many respondents to the call for evidence suggested requiring tax advisers to hold professional indemnity insurance (PII) could provide a baseline level of taxpayer protection. The Government is now consulting on the merits of requiring tax advisers to hold PII, including assessing the impacts of this requirement. The consultation closes on 15 June 2021.

Any decisions resulting from the consultation will be announced at a future fiscal event.

The Government is determined to ensure that all businesses pay the tax that is due, and it is well aware of the potential for VAT losses that may arise when overseas businesses fail to comply with UK VAT rules, and the disadvantage for domestic businesses.

The Government has therefore taken action to make online marketplaces responsible for VAT losses as a result of fraud and error on their sites. HMRC have now issued over 10,800 joint and several liability notices to online marketplaces resulting in the removal of non-compliant sellers. These measures act as a strong deterrent to overseas businesses evading VAT.

The Government will continue to monitor the success of these interventions and will continue to look at alternative methods to address this issue.

The objective of Entrepreneurs’ Relief (ER) is to promote enterprise by offering a reduced rate of tax to individuals who have contributed to the creation and growth of a business.

The Government continues to monitor the effectiveness of ER. HMRC’s most recent evaluation was published in December 2017, and is available here. The Government has no current plans to abolish ER, but keeps all taxes and reliefs under review.