To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many individual visitors accessed the Directgov service via (a) Sky, (b) Virgin Media, (c) NTL, (d) Telewest, (e) Freeview and (f) mobile telephones in each year for which figures are available. (292022)

Directgov does not report against unique visitor numbers but instead uses visits. This is a more accurate metric to use over a period of time. Unique visitors are identified by cookies placed on a user’s PC when they first arrive at the site and there is strong evidence to suggest that a large number of people periodically delete cookies. This will mean that they are identified as a separate unique user when they next return.

The following table represent the number of individual visitors to the Directgov service by each of the methods requested. Analogue TV figures have also been included, but please note that visitor figures for both Analogue TV and Freeview are approximate because these services are broadcasted rather than being accessed.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the set up cost of making Directgov available via (a) Sky, (b) Virgin Media, (c) NTL, (d) Telewest, (e) Freeview and (f) mobile telephones was; and what the running costs of provision of the service via each platform has been in each year for which figures are available. (292023)

The set-up and running costs for each individual platform are commercially sensitive, however, the annual running costs for these platforms are shown in the following table.