Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

Reference was made to uptake and the target of 31,000. We are almost at 19,000 and we will be above 20,000 by the end of the year. We will be up to 26,000 or 27,000 by the end of next year. We will be close enough to that. The new apprenticeship programmes are probably about a year or a year and half behind where we thought they would be because they took longer than we expected to get up and running, but they have grown from 300 to 600 and reached more than 1,000 this year. We hope there will be a similar increase next year. We are making progress but employers are the key. We are getting traction. We are doing great work to promote more interest and the key now is to focus on ways to get employers to engage. That is a key message the committee could help us to get out.