Most UK authorities departments have spent little or nothing with social media platform X since July 2024 following an unpublished 2023 analysis by the Cupboard Workplace. However the Division for Schooling has bucked the pattern, spending £27,118.

Schooling minister Olivia Bailey mentioned the division and its companies spent £4,834.80 with X within the 9 months between July 1, 2024, and the corporate’s acquisition by xAI on March 28, 2025. The division then upped this to £22,283.32 over roughly ten months to January 19.

The cash went on “sector comms and consciousness,” Bailey said in a written parliamentary answer to Conservative MP Jack Rankin. The Register has contacted the division to ask why it has continued to spend comparatively important quantities with X.

Six departments have spent nothing with X since July 2024, ministers mentioned in response to a collection of written parliamentary questions from Jack Rankin and Peter Fortune, one other Conservative MP. “Paid promoting on X was suspended in April 2023 following a Secure Framework evaluation,” justice minister Jake Richards replied. “X is presently used just for natural (non-paid) content material to speak insurance policies and public companies. No expenditure has been made by the Ministry of Justice with X since July 2024.”

Ministers within the Cupboard Workplace, Division for Work and Pensions, Division for Science, Innovation and Expertise, and HM Treasury mentioned their departments had spent nothing with X over the interval whereas the House Workplace mentioned this was the case for its communications directorate.

At seven different departments, ministers mentioned that they had spent comparatively small quantities on the platform’s monitoring companies reasonably than paid promoting. The Division for Transport spent £783.30 on X Premium and X Premium+ companies, whereas the Division for Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs spent simply £9.60 in August 2024 “to make use of the livestreaming performance out there with X Premium at a departmental occasion,” according to minister Dame Angela Eagle.

Many ministers talked about a Secure Framework evaluation by the Cupboard Workplace’s Authorities Communication Service carried out in April 2023. In a written answer last July, Labour peer Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent informed Liberal Democrat Lord Pack that “Secure is the only, complete framework” utilized by the federal government for such assessments, which occur “when there are important platform updates.” She mentioned that since the latest evaluation in April 2023, X has solely been used for unpaid communications exercise.

In December, the Cupboard Workplace refused a Freedom of Information request [PDF] to publish the Secure evaluation of X on the grounds that it could undermine the formulation and improvement of presidency coverage. It did say X had most just lately been assessed throughout 2025, suggesting a overview in the course of the second half of final yr. Officers had most just lately assessed TikTok and YouTube in 2025, Reddit in 2022, and Fb and Instagram in 2018, whereas Bluesky had not been assessed.

Some native authorities together with Devon County Council and Southampton City Council have stopped posting and monitoring their X accounts.

Oxfordshire County Council and the county’s district councils have mentioned they may close accounts completely over the following few months.

“In current months, we’ve seen that X has grow to be much less efficient as an engagement channel and has contributed to a much less secure on-line setting for native communities,” the county council mentioned in a press release in late January, including it was “deeply involved concerning the rise in on-line hate speech and abuse concentrating on girls and women.” ®


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