Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much money from the public purse his Department spent on (a) staff activity, (b) IT costs and (c) external marketing costs related to the creation, maintenance and promotion of the GOV.UK Verify scheme; and how many accounts have been set up under the GOV.UK Verify scheme, in each financial year from the start of 2014-15 up to the end of October 2022.

GOV.UK Verify continues to provide a service for its 7 remaining services and their users, ahead of the system’s retirement in April 2023. More than 10 million GOV.UK Verify accounts have been created over its lifetime.

The amount spent on staff activity in each financial year - primarily comprising pay, pension contributions, training and travel - is shown below:

● 2014-2015: £4.4m

● 2015-2016: £4.3m

● 2016-2017: £5.3m

● 2017-2018: £11.9m

● 2018-2019: £5.3m

● 2019-2020: £8.2m

● 2020-2021: £5.8m

● 2021-2022: £7.4m

● 2022-2023 (to date): £0.2m

The IT-related costs of developing, operating and maintaining GOV.UK Verify, which include payments to Verify’s external identity providers, are as follows:

● 2014-2015: £7.6m

● 2015-2016: £13.4m

● 2016-2017: £18.4m

● 2017-2018: £23.6m

● 2018-2019: £28.7m

● 2019-2020: £9.2m

● 2020-2021: £9.2m

● 2021-2022: £8.7m

● 2022-2023 (to 30/09/22): £2.0m

External marketing costs relating to GOV.UK Verify are not recorded separately.

The number of GOV.UK Verify accounts created in each financial year is as follows:

● 2014-2015: 31,650

● 2015-2016: 649,386

● 2016-2017: 720,943

● 2017-2018: 938,827

● 2018-2019: 1,824,384

● 2019-2020: 2,478,953

● 2020-2021: 1,770,435

● 2021-2022: 1,415,907

● 2022-2023 (until the end of September 2022): 288,528