The scheme was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown in the 1999 budget[3] and was launched in 2000 in the form of financial reimburses to educational course providers for the cost of the ILA incentives.
The Department for Education and Skills was investigating 279 providers on the basis of substantial evidence of misselling, and police had arrested 30 people.
[7] Following its investigation, the Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts reported that the total expenditure on the scheme exceeded £290million (£37million paid towards Capita) with fraud and abuse amounting to £97 million.
[8] The fraudulent activity was in the form of obtaining learning account numbers from individuals or of buying them from corrupt providers and simply cashing the credit, knowing that there was virtually no chance that the fact that no education had been delivered would be detected.
[11] In 2017, after consultations, the Scottish Government replaced ILAs with Individual Training Accounts, which are fully provided by Skills Development Scotland.