Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what his Department's communications budget has been for each financial year from 2010-11 to 2014-15.

My Department has delivered significant reductions in communications spending compared to the last Labour Government.

Communications administration spend

Administration spend includes media monitoring, printing costs for Parliamentary publications and training, but excludes staff costs. Spending was:

2008-09: £2.6 million; 2009-10: £2.0 million; 2010-11: £637,000; 2011-12: £480,000; 2012-13: £347,000; 2013-14: £326,000.

Marketing and advertising spend

This includes all spending on marketing and advertising activities. Spending was:

2008-09 £12.7 million; 2009-10: £9.9 million; 2010-11: £898,000; 2011-12: £980,000; 2012-13: £2.4 million; 2013-14: £2.0 million.

We anticipate final 2014-15 spend will be in the region of 2013-14 spend.

The marketing and advertising figures can be found in my written answer to the hon. Member of 19 March 2015, Question 222568.

To place this all in context, communications activity under the last Labour Government, including departmental spending such as:

· £1.1 million a year on external public relations, despite having 103 in-house communications officers;

· £15,000 on plugging the “Sustainable Communities summit” that was subsequently cancelled;

· £1 million on marketing and public relations for eco-towns, despite the fact not a single house was ever built;

· £3,520 on re-naming Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Fire Services to the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, during one of New Labour’s republican phases of purging public references to the Monarchy;

· £38,200 on sock puppet lobbyists, LLM Communications, astro-turfing friends for the friendless Regional Spatial Strategies;

· £1,371 on re-branding of John Prescott’s ‘Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’ to the pointless ‘Deputy Prime Minister’s Office’;

· £3,830 on the subsequent logo for the new Department for Communities and Local Government, followed by burning a further £24,765 on dropping the “D” and renaming it “Communities and Local Government”, despite being neither, in a futile attempt to sound achingly trendy.

We have run a tighter ship. Right to Buy and the Fire Kills campaign are now the two primary campaigns we run, and both have a clear public benefit, in strong contrast to the culture of spin and excess in the spendthrift Labour years.