Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the costs were to his Department of (a) direct payments to BuzzFeed and (b) staff time for native advertising on BuzzFeed on (i) 29 January, (ii) 9 February and (iii) 13 February 2015; from which budget this spending came from; and what account his Department took of IAB guidelines on native advertising, when placing that advertising.

The Department has made no payments to Buzfeed and there was no cost to the Department. A member of the communications team wrote the editorial as part of their job. DCMS content on Buzzfeed is clearly marked as coming from the Department and Buzzfeed clearly state it is not paid for advertising.