Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much her Department has spent on an advertising campaign for universal credit to be published over the next nine weeks in the Metro newspapers.

The Department provides services to around 22 million people, and has a responsibility to communicate policy and essential information to claimants and other key audiences, in a similar way to other government departments. Newspaper advertising contributes to our routine communications activity that has been running alongside the rollout of Universal Credit since 2013.

The Universal Credit Uncovered media partnership with the Metro is currently underway and running for a further six weeks so we are unable to provide accurate spend to date figures for the partnership. However, we can commit to publish final full spend on the partnership at the end of July once all activity has concluded.

The information used for the partnership was sourced by DWP officials. The content features actual claimant case studies and interviews from Jobcentre work coaches, and the advertorials have been developed in partnership with the Metro.