To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much his Department has spent on (a) print, (b) online, (c) television and (d) radio advertising in each of the last five years; how much has been spent on advertising in 2009-10 to date; and what percentage of advertising expenditure in each year was managed by the Central Office of Information.

[Official Report, 13 January 2010, Vol. 503, c. 995-996W.]

Letter of correction from Mr. Kevan Jones:

A number of errors have been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) on 13 January 2010. These errors arose as a result of mistakes in calculating the breakdown in armed forces recruitment advertising spend against the specified categories in the following areas—TV and Cinema in 2004-05; Print in 2006-07, 2007-08, and 2008-09; and Online and Interactive TV in 2007-08 and 2008-09. Additionally, the original answer included a second table which was incorrectly identified as relating to non-recruitment advertising spend, when in fact it was total spend including creative and production costs. This has been removed from the revised answer and the relevant data incorporated into a single table broken down by the specified categories to provide a clearer representation of the data requested.

The correct answer should have been: (309901)

The majority of advertising conducted by the Ministry of Defence is part of the drive to recruit the best personnel to the armed forces and civil service. In addition the Department may promote other initiatives such as Armed Forces day.

Spend relating to advertising activities, which is available centrally against the specified categories is shown in the following table. The Central Office of Information manages all but a small percentage, less than 1 per cent. of this. Information for 2009-10 is not yet available.