The Government has a stated commitment to achieving three million new apprenticeships by 2020.

So, with small businesses making-up more than 99 per cent of all enterprises in the UK, it is essential that legislators make it easy and cost-effective for smaller employers to invest in apprentices. Failure to do so will result in widespread disengagement by small businesses.

On the plus side, there is significant scope for growth in apprenticeships. Only around one in four of small businesses in England currently has an apprentice in their business. The down side is that the cost of apprenticeships, lack of time to devote to training, concerns around their day to day management and difficulty accessing information are major challenges for smaller firms.

Rather worryingly, according to Government figures there has been a 28 per cent year on year drop in the number of apprenticeships in the UK. This is a clear and stark signal that the current system isn’t working to its full potential.

The Government must now come clean about its ambitious apprenticeship target of three million starts by 2020. In my opinion, this is looking increasingly out of sight. To hit the target we would need to see about 73,000 new apprenticeships per month a month.

Lessons must be learnt from the continuing drop in starts and more must be done to arrest the slump which is damaging productivity and compounding already chronic skills gaps.

The Government has to take steps now to make it easier and more cost-effective for small firms to invest in apprentices. This includes extending the small businesses incentive, currently only available to firms with fewer than 50 employees, to all non-levy payers which recruit a 16-18 year old apprentice.

That way the Government will do more to help all of those who want to ‘earn while they learn’ – and all of those small business owners who might be able to give them the opportunity to do so.