Skills – their development and encouragement – is a key priority in Business West's asks for the new government. So I was interested in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's pledge to create 100,000 more apprenticeships by 2029, if they win the General Election.

He said: "Thanks to our plan, apprenticeships are much higher quality than they were under Labour. And now, we will create 100,000 more by putting an end to rip-off degrees and offering our young people the employment opportunities and financial security they need to thrive."

All well and good, but to make this work companies must be incentivised and encouraged to take on more apprentices which have nosedived since the introduction of the apprentice levy in 2017.

The levy – 0.3% of the wage bill for companies with a turnover above £3m – has just not worked properly and needs to be changed. As a result, we have seen something like £0.5bn being regularly returned to the Treasury when companies have not taken on apprentices.

Sara-Jane Watkins, Principal of South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, tells me that the new government must make the apprenticeship system far more flexible, and most importantly, responsive to the needs of business.

This is one of the overall conclusions of the ongoing work for government into the Local Skills Improvement Plans (lSIPs) in our region by the team at Business West.

Sara-Jane says government must allow the apprenticeship levy to be used for shorter, tailored training programmes that address our immediate skills shortages. That makes complete sense to me.

Small companies must now be given increased incentives by government to invest in apprentices. They simply do not have the time to navigate the complexities of employing an apprentice.

It does seem mindblowing to me that for every new apprentice start, it can require nearly 100 different checks. This is just bureaucracy and off-putting to the employer and would-be apprentice.

A good apprentice system is, in my view, one of the keys to unlock real growth. It must be a key priority for the new government.