More than £2m of taxpayers’ money was spent preparing for the pornography block before the policy was quietly dropped in early October, the government has revealed.

The bulk of the spending, £2.2m, was paid to the British Board for Film Classification to do the detailed work on the policy from 2016 onwards. Before then, additional costs were borne by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where civil servants were tasked with developing the proposals as part of their normal work.

Answering a written question fromthe shadow DCMS secretary, Tom Watson, Matt Warman for the government added: “Building on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of part three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime.”

Watson attacked the figures, telling the Guardian: “This was a popular policy to protect children that the government has completely botched. It was beset with delays and has now been dropped completely despite the government spending £2m on it. We urgently need comprehensive new tech regulation to be introduced to protect our children.”

The government’s initial plan was to require every pornography provider to verify that visitors were over 18, with steep fines from the BBFC threatened for those that failed to adopt a robust verification scheme. In practice, that was expected to be one of a number of plans provided by third parties, which included credit card checks, scans of government ID, and “porn passes” purchased from newsagents.

But difficulties in the implementation of the programme pushed the adoption date back, first to April 2019, and then to the end of this year. On 16 October, the culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, announced it was to be abandoned entirely in favour of a broader “duty of care” for all websites.

“This course of action will give the regulator discretion on the most effective means for companies to meet their duty of care,” Morgan said. “The government’s commitment to protecting children online is unwavering. Adult content is too easily accessed online and more needs to be done to protect children from harm.”

It is not just government funds that were wasted on the abortive scheme. Multiple private companies had developed systems that they were hoping to license to pornography providers.