'Get Ready for Brexit' campaign spent £46m of taxpayers' cash without making a difference, watchdog finds

Publicity splurge was much-mocked at the time for leaving people in the dark about the preparations they should make

The much-ridiculed ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ campaign last autumn spent £46m of taxpayers’ cash without any evidence that people were better prepared, a watchdog has found.

The publicity splurge – in the run-up to the intended 31 October date for leaving the EU – ran for nearly two months on billboards and in newspapers, after the threat of a no-deal crash-out rose.

It was widely criticised at the time for failing to tell people what exactly they should do to prepare and because MPs had passed a law to make a no-deal Brexit impossible anyway.

Now the National Audit Office has sharply criticised its impact, finding it failed to increase the proportion of the public looking for information – which remained at around one third.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said the Cabinet Office had “successfully corralled multiple government departments to work together effectively and launched this complex campaign at great speed”.

But he added: “However, it is not clear that the campaign resulted in the public being significantly better prepared.”

The publicity drive was ordered by Boris Johnson after he became prime minister last July with hardline vow to leave by the end of October “do or die”.

It was not halted October 28, three days before the UK was supposed to leave, after the EU granted another extension to the end of January.

The campaign encouraged people and businesses to visit the government’s main gov.uk website, to answer questions and receive advice on preparing for the UK's exit from the bloc.

That in turn provoked controversy after evidence that ministers ordered data from the website to be analysed to “support” Brexit.

The Information Commissioner was urged to investigate what the data as to be used for and any breach of data protection rights if people had not given permission for their information to be collected.

Among those specifically targeted were British citizens who were intending to travel to Europe in the days and weeks after Brexit and businesses that exported to the EU.

The NAO report says the government chose the most expensive of four options put forward by the Cabinet Office, with a potential total budget of £100m.

Officials argued that it reached 99.8 per cent of the population, with every member of the public having the opportunity to see the adverts 55 times.

“Not undertaking the campaign would have risked significant and unnecessary disruption to businesses and to people's lives,” a government spokesman said.