Government Advertorials

Upon joining the rest of the Epsom commuter class on the 8.33 train to Victoria today (running slightly late, as ever), I decided to flick through the Metro – mainly to catch the Liverpool match report from last night. As an Reds fan, good news has been hard to come by of late and so a 3-0 European victory was something to relish. Sadly, the match didn’t warrant a report, but was shifted to one side to make space for a puff piece on Wayne Rooney – terrific…

Anyway, back to the point. When I turned back to the start of the paper to make my way through the news pages, I was surprised to be met with a huge, full-spread Government advert for the Backing Young Britain programme. As many have pointed out, it seems clear that the Labour government will not need to worry about the poor levels of party funding they have raised through the Unions or their other donors, they can just get us to pay for their electioneering by way of departmental advertising spend.

The Spectator has detailed how the advertising budget for central government has soared from £13m in December to £30m in January and £34m in February of this year. It seems likely that the budget will be retained at this level, or may even be increased as polling day nears. I have yet to look at advertising spends for other election years, but I imagine the pattern will be fairly similar.

Similar to the Communications Allowance, then, this seems to be another in-built advantage that sitting Governments can enjoy at the expense of the taxpayer. The Conservatives are committed to removing the Communications Allowance. Let’s hope they abolish this kind of practice as well.