Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much funding his Department (a) budgeted for and (b) spent on advertising in each of the last three financial years.

The Cabinet Office spent the following on advertising in the last three financial years:

20/21: £376,029,723.21

21/22: £168,730,321.96

22/23: £27,485,611.31

Detail on this and other spending is routinely published by the Cabinet Office on GOV.UK here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cabinet-office-spend-data

Advertising spend in 20/21 and 21/22 was considerably higher due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Cabinet Office played a leading role in providing the public with information about the Pandemic. Increased advertising was essential to doing this and keeping the country safe.

The Cabinet Office budgets for advertising and other public relations activity is set in order to provide flexibility to the Cabinet Office to deal appropriately with what are often unforeseen events. This has been a long standing budgetary good practice under successive administrations.

The overall budget for Marketing and Media for the years in question are set out below:

20/21: £558,297,000

21/22: £242,177,000

22/23: £39,501,000

Work on advertising is primarily carried out by communications staff employed by departments and like all areas of government spending, costs are reviewed regularly to ensure value for money.