Facebook adverts boasting of the government’s Towns Fund investment were targeted at marginal seats in the last election.
The adverts ran in the days after the election was called but before purdah, when certain communications are restricted.
The government said that adverts ran for all 101 towns in the scheme but Facebook’s ad library records only 18 such posts. Of those, 13 had been selected for funding by housing secretary Robert Jenrick and junior minister Jake Berry. In ten of them, the number of impressions the adverts got was larger than the majority of the seat.
In Newcastle-under-Lyme between 7,000 and 8,000 people saw the advert. Labour’s majority had been 30 and the Conservatives won the seat with a majority of 7,446.
Jenrick told local press at the time: “It’s not a bribe.”
