§ Mr. Craigenasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is his estimate of the current utilisation of training centres in Great Britain in terms of training days per year at training centres within the public sector.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonThe information is not available in the form requested by the hon. Member. In 1981 a total of 808,867 training weeks were available for training in skillcentres of which 672,322 (83%) were taken up.
§ Mr. Craigenasked the Secretary of State for Employment what extra provision would be required to provide some 100,000 new 12 month training places in 1982–83 under his new training initiative.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonProvision for the youth opportunities programme in 1982–83 is £747 million, an increase of over 75 per cent. on 1981–82. This very large increase is accounted for by improvements in the quality of the scheme and also by an increase in the number of places to 630,000.
Most of the new places in 1982–83 will be developed from existing schemes of high quality. The Manpower Services Commission is also encouraging sponsors to put forward proposals for entirely new schemes.