Electoral Commission: Publicity

Justine Greening
To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission how much the Electoral Commission spent on (a) television, (b) radio and (c) poster advertisements promoting (i) voting and (ii) voter registration in the period up to the (A) 2005 general election and (B) 2009 elections to the European Parliament.

Mr. Streeter
The Electoral Commission informs me that it ran public information campaigns for both elections. Each campaign comprised two phases, the first to provide information on registration, the second on voting.

Expenditure on buying advertising for the 2005 general election campaign was as follows (figures rounded to the nearest thousand):

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|          |Registration phase|Voting phase|
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|Television|1,361,000         |1,915,000   |
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|Radio     |21,000            |811,000     |
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|Posters   |0                 |25,000      |
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The Commission spent a further £496,000 on producing advertising for this campaign.

The Commission’s expenditure on buying advertising for the 2009 elections to the European Parliament was as follows (figures rounded to the nearest thousand):

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|          |Registration phase|Voting phase|
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|Television|1,249,000         |16,000      |
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|Radio     |395,000           |164,000     |
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|Posters   |84,000            |0           |
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The Commission spent a further £533,000 on producing advertising for this campaign.

Justine Greening
To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission how much the Electoral Commission plans to spend on (a) encouraging voter registration and (b) encouraging voting through (i) television, (ii) radio and (iii) poster advertisements in advance of the next general election.

Mr. Streeter
The Electoral Commission informs me that it currently plans to spend approximately £2.2 million on advertising for its campaign in advance of the next general election. It is not yet possible to break down this expenditure in the way requested as this will depend on when an election takes place and on the amount of notice given of an election.