To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many apprenticeship starts there were in Nottingham, North constituency in (a) 1997 and (b) 2008-09. (309018)

Information on the number of apprenticeship starts is published in a quarterly statistical first release (SFR). The latest SFR was published on 17 December:

http://www.thedataservice.org.uk/statistics/sfrdec09

Supplementary table 6.1 shows apprenticeship starts by region, local authority and parliamentary constituency from 2003/04, the earliest year for which we have comparable data.