Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate the Government has made of the cost to the public purse of (a) billboards and (b) other physical advertisements on how the public should prepare for the UK leaving the EU.

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. In the coming weeks and months, we plan to use 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. The latest release (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-spend-data) showed that as of 31 December 2018, expenditure relating to this campaign totalled £300,000. In conjunction, Cabinet Office will disclose full costs regarding the Out of Home advertising strand as part of these data sets in due course.