The Mayor has been accused of splashing more cash on “feel-good campaigns that boost his own PR” than on Londoners facing food poverty. Transport for London (TfL) under Sadiq Khan has spent £1 million on free advertising for vaginal moisturisers and lingerie – more than double his entire fund for tackling food insecurity, according to Emma Best AM, City Hall Conservatives’ health spokesperson.
The Mayor recently claimed he was spending £400,000 of GLA cash on a fund to help those struggling to put food on the table, adding he was doing “all he can” to help people with the cost of living. But City Hall Tories have highlighted that in 2021, vaginal moisturiser company Replens MD was awarded £500,000 of free advertising across the TfL network as part of a diversity prize to promote their product. In 2021, TfL said it had “put itself in the driving seat of efforts to better represent the elderly in advertising” after hosting the Diversity in Advertising competition to address “inauthentic and one-dimensional portrayals of older people.”
And in 2019, another £500,000 of free ads were given to lingerie brand Nubian Skin in a similar deal. City Hall also spent £700,000 on two beach parties held just before the pandemic.
