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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of money spent from the public purse on youth services in (a) 1997, (b) 2007, (c) 2010 and (d) 2017.

Local authorities are responsible for allocating funding to youth services in line with local need. The Government has made over £200bn available to local authorities to spend on local services over this Spending Review.

The Government is committed to making sure young people have opportunities to develop their skills and participate in their communities. The Office for Civil Society (OCS), now based in DCMS, has spent over £667m on youth programmes and supporting youth service delivery between 2014/15 and 2017/18 - with £190m of that being spent in 2017/18. DCMS does not hold data for spending on youth services for 1997, 2007 or 2010 as the department did not hold responsibility for youth policy prior to 2014.