Health minister Simon Burns said in a parliamentary written answer that the department spent £2.9m and £1.4m on paying for NHS Choices to appear in search engine results in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 financial years respectively, far more than three other departments that revealed similar spending.
"In line with government policy, NHS Choices no longer has any arrangement, or pays for any search engine activity," Burns told Conservative MP Damian Hinds on 27 July 2010, who had asked how much the department and its agencies had spent on "search engine biasing" in recent financial years.
"No commitments have been made with Google or any other search provider for 'pay per click' online marketing since the moratorium on marketing spend was put in place on 24 May 2010," Burns added.
The minister said that NHS Choices had used paid search activity to promote reliable health information to a wide audience. "Paid search activity was a key component of several major campaigns for the department in 2009-10, including our anti-smoking and pandemic flu campaigns to reach as large an audience as possible."
The health minister said that the DoH's corporate website and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had not spent any money with Google or other search engines on such advertising.
In response to similar questions from Damian Hinds, minister Robert Neill said that Communities and Local Government spent £758,473 on search engines from 2008-10. In a parliamentary written answer, published on 26 July 2010, Neill said that the money was expended on campaign websites. "The department conducts its paid search activity through the Central Office of Information (COI)," Neill added.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spent a total of £469,502 from 2008-10 on paid searches and the Department for Energy and Climate Change spent £309,800 last year.
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