A former skills adviser to the prime minister has called on the next government to reduce the rate that employers pay into the apprenticeship levy but extend the tax to more businesses.
Baroness Alison Wolf also suggests cutting support for older apprentices while culling expensive apprenticeships in oversupplied occupations.
She described these “straightforward changes” as policy “slam dunks” in an opinion piece for the Financial Times yesterday in which she warned Labour against its plans to expand the levy to fund other forms of training.
Wolf, author of the 2011 review of vocational education, served as a part-time adviser on skills to the prime minister from February 2020 to February 2023 and is currently a non-executive director at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
