Priti Patel spent £77,000 on eyebrows and other beauty products.
This sum was paid to a company selling eyebrow products and services, but the Home Office has said the money was spent on PPE. The company in question does also sell PPE.
A Facebook post claims that Home Secretary Priti Patel spent £77,000 on “eyebrows and other beauty products”. This seems to be referencing a story originally published in Byline Times about expenses paid for on the Home Office’s procurement cards in 2020.
Similar claims have travelled widely on social media, and we have fact checked them before.
In the wake of these claims the Home Office posted a series of tweets in which they said the expenses listed were not specifically Ms Patel’s but department wide, and they covered the cost of personal protective equipment (PPE), not beauty products.
Home Office data shows that in March 2020, six payments worth £52,594 were made to “Beautiful Brows” and two payments worth £24,675.84 were made to “Global Beauty Products”, totalling £77,269.84.
A website named “Beautiful Brows and Lashes Professional”, sells PPE as well as lash and eyebrow service products, and gives its contact details as “Global Beauty Products Limited”. The Home Office confirmed to Full Fact that Beautiful Brows was the brand but the overarching trading company is called Global Beauty Products.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the Home Office said the money was spent on PPE, which appears consistent with details listed on the company’s website.
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