Thank you for those questions. I’ll start with the last one: yes, about 25 per cent of the present programme is funded by European funds and I think it’s fair to say that without those funds the apprenticeship programme would not be the success it is today. We’ve also benefited from membership of various CVET organisations across Europe and indeed I have attended a conference in order to learn from the best practice across Europe in implementing apprenticeship schemes and work-based learning schemes in general. There’s no doubt at all, in my mind anyway, that our European Union membership has improved both the quality of and our ability to pay for our current programme.

I’ll just go backwards through your questions because that’s the way I’ve written them down. In terms of the shared apprenticeship schemes, we do have a number of successful ones. One of the things that we’re looking to improve on is using the labour market intelligence from our regional skills partnerships, which are really all up and running very seriously now and we’re looking forward to getting their annual plans in any minute now—I think it’s the end of this month, off the top of my head; if I’m wrong I’ll correct myself, but I think it’s the end of this month. What they’re doing is driving regional arrangements of that sort and we all know that they help small employers the most. There was an excellent scheme up in Blaenau Gwent that I attended with Alun Davies, the launch of that alongside the local council, which is a very good exemplar of how those schemes can work.

So, yes, what we’re very much looking to do is have horses for courses. So, the regional skills partnerships will drive a lot of the implementation in their area and that also goes for the Welsh language, because, as you know, there’s much more demand for apprenticeships through the medium of Welsh in various parts of Wales than there is, for example, in Swansea, where I represent, although there is some demand there. What we’ll be doing is working with a network of providers to make sure that where apprenticeships in Welsh are required, or where there’s a skills gap for that, that we can fill that gap with appropriate provision, and I look forward to working with the Member in doing that.

We don’t know what success looks like for that at the moment because one of the things we want to do between now and September is to talk again to all of our stakeholders about exactly that and make sure that we shape the upcoming programme exactly right. What I’m announcing today really is the plan to consult on that over the summer and to come back to this Assembly early in the autumn term with a plan for that.

In terms of the numbers and types that are part of that, I’m not going to be drawn on the numbers because it takes, for example, three times as much money to train an engineering apprentice as it does a business process apprentice. So, if I say that there will be an exact number, it may be that I then have to train more of the people we don’t want than the people we do want in order to hit what would be a false number target. What we’re saying is that there will be a minimum of 100,000. That’s around the level, because it went up and down a little bit over the last Assembly term, but it’s broadly equivalent to the level we had last time. That was a good level. It was assisted by a number of budget agreements with your party and the Liberal Democrats and we’re very happy to go ahead on that basis. But I do very much want to match the provision of apprenticeships to the need in the economy for it and our projected skills shortages.

Then, last but not least, on the levy, we have had extensive communication and negotiation, with officials meeting. I’ve met with the Ministers myself. We do not have clarity. Our understanding at the moment is that it will be Barnettised in the same line as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. BIS suffered a 17-ish per cent cut, and that would give us no extra money at all, but those negotiations are not yet over and I and the Minister for finance will be talking again in some depth about how we can maximise that for Wales. However, it’s not just Wales. In England, it is clear now that the apprenticeship levy moneys are replacing moneys that were previously in general taxation, and what we’re effectively looking at is a specific employer tax, replacing money that was previously given to this sort of funding by general taxation moneys.