Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much the Government has spent on (a) newspaper and magazine and (b) radio adverts advertising the potential effects of the UK leaving the EU; what assessment he has made of the value for money of such advertising; and if he will make a statement.

The Cabinet Office is leading and coordinating the cross-departmental Prepare for EU Exit public information campaign to help fulfil the Government’s duty to inform citizens and businesses about how leaving the EU might affect them, and to advise them on the steps they may need to take to prepare. To date we have used a range of paid-for and no-cost channels to direct citizens and businesses to a dedicated area on GOV.UK at Gov.uk/euexit.

The Cabinet Office has undertaken to publish information relating to ongoing expenditure on the public information campaign as part of the department’s regular data transparency releases. For maximum economies of scale, media for all Government campaigns is bought centrally through a new Crown Commercial Service framework. The framework maximises value for UK taxpayers through robust pricing guarantees that are defined for the life of the contract and rates that are benchmarked against other public and private sector organisations.