Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which minister in her Department authorised the recent universal credit campaign in the Metro newspaper in May 2019.

We are the biggest Government Department with a day to day operation on which around 22 million citizens depend. We have a responsibility to advertise Universal Credit and have been doing so for some time. This helps ensure people understand the benefits they may be entitled to and that they have the information they need when it comes to making a claim.

The Department has a responsibility to ensure claimants do not miss out on their full entitlements and to encourage people to make their claim as quickly as possible.

To identify complaint cases concerning the Universal Credit campaign in the Metro newspaper would require every complaint case to be examined. So, this data could only be collated at a disproportionate cost to the Department.

In November 2018 Ministers agreed to the principle of national media partnership. The specific Metro campaign was taken forward by Departmental officials. Ministers agreed the content of the launch products.