Phil Taylor: Mayor dazzles London with £100 million ad spending

Phil Taylor (blog) runs a small business in Hammersmith and is a councillor for the Northfield ward. in Ealing

Earlier this year the Electoral Commission reported that all parties spent £41 million on the last general election. On 9th August Transport for London (TfL), the Mayor of London's transport quango, wrote to me admitting that they had spent £78 million in the previous year on advertising, marketing and communications.  In this article I will explore the scope of Livingstone's £100 million propaganda spending, how the Mayor tries to hide it, how wasteful it is and what the Tory mayoral candidate and the GLA Tories should be doing to rein him in. 

TfL represents the biggest chunk of the Mayor's ad spending but the whole “GLA family" are at it (click on image to enlarge table).

 

 

The GLA accounts say:

"Although this is not a statutory requirement for the Authority, as it is for other local authorities under Section 5 of the Local Government Act 1986, the information is nevertheless disclosed."

TfL said in their last accounts that they only spent £5.2 million but their more recent letter said:

"The Statement of Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2005 included a voluntary disclosure of expenditure on publicity which was consistent with the section 5 requirements. This excluded items exempt under the Local Authorities (Publicity Account) (Exemption) Order 1987 such as: publicity required by statute; invitations to tender; promoting the use and availability of timetables, amenities, facilities, and guidebooks; road traffic conditions; and publicity addressed to tenants. The amount disclosed for publicity was consequently only a small proportion of the total expenditure on such activities. The amounts paid to The Londoner in 2004/05 were not included in the total disclosed in the Statement of Accounts for publicity as it was considered that the advertisements placed fell within the definition of exempt publicity above." 

Their subsequent owning up to spending of £78 million makes them look deceitful to put it mildly. If the GLA’s figures are as mendacious as TfL’s there are more bodies to find buried there.

 

The Met figure is only £2.1 million but they feel they are not obliged to reveal it as they are exempt from Section 5 of the Local Government Act 1986.  What is really striking about the Met figures is that they "chose" to spend one quarter of all of their communications budget in the run up to the pan-London local elections promoting the highly political expansion of the commitment to roll out Safer Neighbourhood teams.  This is direct evidence of ad spending being used for political purposes. 

 

Also see the London Development Agency accounts and the London Fire & Emergency Development Planning Authority accounts.

The London Speed Safety Camera Partnership have not bothered to publish accounts on their website since 2002/3 but, as we shall see, they are probably spending £1 million pa.

I figured it was reasonable to round up the disclosed figures to £100 million given the level of deliberate obfuscation around them. Also be aware that the Olympic Delivery Authority is already adding to this geyser of public cash.

 

Much of this spending is totally ineffective. In March of this year the London Safety Camera Partnership, a joint venture between TfL and the Met, wrote to me to admit to spending £800K on their young drivers ad campaign.  They were unguarded enough to mention that they had done pre- and post-research to measure the effectiveness of this spend.  It took four separate requests and seven weeks to get hold of a copy of the research which said:

“Attitudes towards speeding, speed cameras and the consequences of speeding have not changed but we would not expect to see a change this quickly.”

In other words you can spend £800K but it will not make an impact in our media saturated world. 

 

The London Mayor is spending around £100 million per annum on advertising.  This spending distorts London democracy as it is 2.5 times more than all political parties spent at the last general election and Livingstone does it every year not just every 4 or 5.  To give another comparison the Mayor's £100 million spending is about the same in cash terms as all government ad spending in the first year of New Labour which was £111 million.  The Mayor systematically tries to hide this spending and much of it is entirely wasted in any case. 

 

The GLA Tories should be demanding two things:

 

• Firstly, that accounts produced by the GLA and its bodies in the forthcoming reporting season make full and   transparent disclosures of all advertising, publicity and communications costs   with no exemptions. 
• Secondly, that all GLA related spending on communications should be limited to a fixed sum that is openly disclosed to the Assembly during the budget setting process.

Comments

[Donal Blaney]

It is one of the key opportunities for the Tories. People realise they pay higher taxes but they are not getting more for their money. They were willing to give Brown a chance to throw money at public services but their own eyes tell them it was pointless. Surely now is the time to offer the voters a real alternative?

[James Cleverly]

We should be shouting about this at every opportunity.

When Labour's London Mayor talks about tax cuts putting nurses and teachers out on the streets we should remind people that it is actually smartly dressed media types (like me) who will be losing out. And we deserve it!

[Wat Tyler]

This is absolutely indefensible. At the central government level Labour has tripled propaganda/advertising spend to £334m pa (see eg http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2006/02/recent-bonfires-2.html ).

But at £100m pa for just London Ken takes the Chocolate Hobnob.

[Deputy Editor]

Three cheers for Phil for doing all the ground work on this one.

Very worthy investigative work.

[Derek Green]

Why should anyone be surprised about overspending and waste by Ken Livingstone and the Labour Party? They are socialists - who believe that they have a right to tax as much as they possibly can - and then use that money to advance socialism. Value for money is not something they ever consider. Profligacy and waste are endemic to socialism.

[london tory]

"They are socialists - who believe that they have a right to tax as much as they possibly can - and then use that money to advance socialism. Value for money is not something they ever consider. Profligacy and waste are endemic to socialism."

This is not the way to attack the Mayor.

Always tie his actions back to lack of delivery on the basics: crime and transport.

Talking about socialism makes us sound decades out of date and doesn't touch Livingstone's weak point: lack of delivery.

[london tory]

And three cheers to Phil, as the Deputy Editor says. You would have thought that this might have been uncovered by the Evening Standard... but now it's out there, which can only be a good thing.

[Simon Chapman]

Livingstone has previous for this.

I remember listening to him speak down in Bristol in the mid-1980s after the GLC had been abolished. He said then that the GLC had paid in advance for advertising space. When the government tried to restrict the amount the GLC could spend on advertising during the run up to abolition, it found that Livingstone was still churning out vast amounts of pro-GLC propaganda, all already paid for.