From January to June last year, the MoD spent £583,968 on social media. This year, they spent £853,832 according to official figures.
The Parliamentary question highlighting this information was asked by Deidre Brock, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much his Department has spent on advertising on social media in each month since January 2016.”
The question was answered by Tobias Ellwood, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans:
“The vast majority of social media advertising spend within the Ministry of Defence is to aid recruitment into our Armed Forces. Since January 2016 the Ministry of Defence spent the following amounts on social media.”
Since January 2016 the Ministry of Defence spent the following amounts on social media.
| Date | Spend |
| January 2016 | £71,553 |
| February 2016 | £177,507 |
| March 2016 | £165,471 |
| April 2016 | £52,329 |
| May 2016 | £64,864 |
| June 2016 | £52,244 |
| July 2016 | £86,978 |
| August 2016 | £166,245 |
| September 2016 | £144,463 |
| October 2016 | £118,660 |
| November 2016 | £179,258 |
| December 2016 | £185,023 |
| January 2017 | £212,572 |
| February 2017 | £202,038 |
| March 2017 | £244,785 |
| April 2017 | £12,287 |
| May 2017 | £79,831 |
| June 2017 | £102,319 |
The increase in budget would appear to support claims that this is to aid recruitment and this is a common practice in western nations with a high percentage of young people using social media.
Recruiting via social media is booming, 84% of organisations do it, and 9% more are planning to. This is up sharply from 2011, when only 56% used social media for recruitment, according to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey.
Going to be contentious here. £500k is a small sum compared to £13000000000 (£13billion) spent on foreign aid last year!