Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department is monitoring content that is publicly available on social networking sites using overt monitoring techniques.

The Department engages and makes use of social media to understand public and stakeholder sentiment and to respond where appropriate. The information gathered through monitoring enables the department to develop policy, provide real-time insights so we can respond quickly to users and anticipate potential issues. The department also undertakes systematic social media monitoring to evaluate campaigns and programmes of work.