<p>Supporting Apprenticeships</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 26 September 2017.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 2:07, 26 September 2017

Thank you for that. When, earlier this year, I raised in the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee concern expressed by the four Welsh police forces that they couldn’t access the apprenticeship levy and the £2 million that they were paying into it, the skills Minister replied that the Welsh Government would instead strike up a grant or contract arrangements, in dialogue with the College of Policing, and that they had meetings in the diary with the police and crime commissioners. I was then told subsequently, in March, that those meetings had, at that stage, been cancelled and not rescheduled. How do you respond to the concern expressed in August by the four police and crime commissioners and chief constables in Wales that this could result in 45 fewer officers in north Wales and potential recruits choosing to sign up to work for English forces instead, and calling for urgent action from the Welsh Government because the situation is putting them at a distinct disadvantage, and finally pointing out that although in England the money that forces pay into the levy goes to the English police college, in Wales it goes to the Welsh Government and, therefore, this lies in your hands?