Mayor spends over £250m increasing the cost of living, only £80m on reducing it

• Sadiq Khan is spending £250m on cameras, signs and infrastructure for the ULEZ expansion, so that he can hit Londoners who cannot afford to upgrade their vehicles with a £12.50 per day ‘cost of living charge.’

• He has also spent more on beach parties (£700k) than he has on tackling food insecurity (£400k).

• Earlier this month, the Mayor said he was spending more than £80m to help people with the cost of living, saying he was doing “all he can.”

• Neil Garratt AM said the Mayor has “taken the public for fools” and that he is “making things worse for Londoners while blaming everyone else.”

The Mayor of London is spending more money punishing Londoners who cannot afford to upgrade their car with a daily charge, than he is helping people struggling with the cost of living, according to Neil Garratt AM, GLA Conservatives’ economy spokesman.

New figures have revealed the Mayor is spending £250m on cameras and signs for the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion, which will hit affected Londoners with a daily £12.50 ‘cost of living charge.’

On Sunday, Sadiq Khan said in a press release that he has been doing ‘all he can to offer support to Londoners’, but admitted that he was only providing £80m of support from his budget of over £19 billion.

He also revealed he was only spending £400,000 tackling food insecurity, despite finding £700,000 to spend on two beach parties before the pandemic.

Over the course of his Mayoralty, but before this year, Sadiq Khan has spent:

• £300m on excessive staff perks at TfL, including an estimated £159m giving free travel to friends, family and housemates of TfL staff, over £100m on ‘golden goodbyes’ for departing staff, and at least £38.8m in paid facility time for trade union officials.

• Over £210m on office staff. Spending on City Hall employees has risen by 82% under Sadiq Khan.

The Mayor is spending approximately £9 million per year on his PR budget, nearly £3 million more than his predecessor.

Neil Garratt AM, GLA Conservatives economy spokesman, said:

“The Mayor is again taking people for fools. He complains that more must be done about the cost of living crisis but chooses to spend more money making it worse.

“Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion is a cost of living charge. A £12.50 daily hammer blow for outer Londoners who cannot afford a newer car, that will have a negligible effect on air quality. He is wasting £250m on these ULEZ spy cameras after blowing millions more on beach parties, staff perks, and spin doctors. Money that could have been spent helping people.

”This out of touch Mayor is making things worse for Londoners while blaming everyone else. If he does care about the cost of living crisis he should do something positive: scrap the ULEZ expansion to ease the cost burden on London.”