Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much his Department has spent on promoted content on (a) Twitter, (b) Facebook and (c) Instagram in each month since June 2017.

The Home Office has used social media as one of many channels and approaches to deliver crime prevention and public awareness communica-tions campaigns. For example, social media adverts have been successful-ly used as part of knife crime prevention campaigns as a way to reach teenagers in an environment which they use and trust.

The Home Office has spent £850,005 on promoted activity with these platforms since June 2017 through its media buying agency Carat, which amounts to approximately 0.28% of overall annual communications spend across Government this year. Ad hoc spend may not be included in this amount.