Ministers given £930m to spend on advertising space to tout policies

theguardian.com:

Ministers have budgeted more than £930m on buying advertising space in an effort to sell government policies in the lead-up to the next election, analysis has revealed.

The amount is almost double the normal advertising budget for government over the previous four years, although a significant amount more was spent on Covid-related advertising, according to data compiled by Labour.

It comes amid reports over the weekend that Liz Truss was preparing to launch an advertising campaign to highlight her £150bn intervention to freeze energy bills at an average of £2,500, after reportedly telling colleagues the government had not received any political credit for the intervention, which was clouded by the tax-cut row.

While most of the spend would have been agreed under Boris Johnson’s administration, the vast sums came as departments received warnings from the Treasury that they must make efficiency savings and work within existing budgets set by last year’s spending review, despite inflation.

Departments do not have to fulfil the maximum spend on advertising, but past spending records show only the Ministry of Defence spent substantially less than the maximum value of its contract from 2018-22.

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, called the planned increase “absolutely obscene at any time, let alone in the middle of a cost of living crisis”, and pointed out that “this is just the cost of buying the ad space, it doesn’t even include the vast sums that will be spent on producing adverts as well”.

Two key departments involved in the growth plan drawn up by Truss and the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, will get significantly increased media-buying budgets. At the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, budgets will