Taylor Swift freebies: Sadiq Khan and City Hall aides were gifted 22 tickets to Wembley Stadium shows

Taylor Swift: 22 free tickets were accepted by Sadiq Khan’s City Hall (PA Wire)
Taylor Swift: 22 free tickets were accepted by Sadiq Khan’s City Hall (PA Wire)

The controversy over the free Taylor Swift tickets gifted to Sadiq Khan and his aides has taken a new twist.

A total of 22 tickets to the pop superstar’s shows at Wembley Stadium this summer were received by City Hall staff, The Standard can reveal. This is almost twice as many as have been publicly declared by the mayor and his team.

A spokesman for the Greater London Authority told The Standard on Monday: “We are aware of 22 tickets that have been gifted.

“Nineteen have been declared. The three that have not been declared were given to staff members who have left.”

Neil Garratt, leader of the City Hall Conservatives, said: "The news that now 22 tickets to Taylor Swift gigs were gifted to GLA staff raises significant questions that the public will want answers for.

“For starters, who was generous enough to provide all of these tickets, and what motive might they have for giving them?

“The Mayor's office needs to act swiftly to dispel any notions of a conflict of interest and come clean on what happened in June and August if we are to begin to move past this freebie fix."

The 19 tickets that have been declared to the City Hall monitoring officer – the official who acts as an impartial watchdog over gifts and hospitality – include 12 received by the mayor and his aides, all of whom are on six-figure salaries.

Sadiq Khan: says he will continue to ‘bang the drum for London’ (Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)
Sadiq Khan: says he will continue to ‘bang the drum for London’ (Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)

The 12 tickets included six received by Mr Khan, two by Justine Simons, the deputy mayor for culture, two by Ali Picton, the mayoral director of operations, one by Sarah Brown, the mayor’s director of communications, and one by Elliot Treharne, the assistant director of transport.

But the recipients of seven tickets - thought to me more junior staff - have not had to publicly declare that they were gifted arguably the most sought-after tickets of the year to Taylor Swift’s sell-out Eras tour.

Instead, their declarations to the monitoring officer, which should have been approved by their line manager, according to the GLA’s code of conduct, remain confidential.

The GLA spokesman said: “The other tickets were for members of staff who are not senior enough to have to list them publicly. However, they have been declared internally.”

City Hall admitted last Friday that the six VIP tickets, each valued at £500, used by Mr Khan and his family for the August 15 concert were worth almost three times more than the mayor had previously declared on the GLA’s gifts register.

This came after BBC London revealed that Mr Khan had declared the tickets 10 days late, understated their value and provided incorrect information about who had provided the gift.

City Hall blamed this on human error by a member of staff and said the register had been amended to include the correct information.

It is not known why Mr Khan’s declaration was made late, nor which family members attended alongside him.

Mr Khan has previously declared himself a “Proud Swiftie”.

A total of 11 people, including the mayor, are believed to have been in the VIP box on August 15. The tickets were donated by LS Events, an events contractor that has worked on events linked to City Hall, such as football “fan zones”.

City Hall had previously admitted in a freedom of information response in July that “four members of staff attended a performance on Sunday 23 June”.

Only Ms Picton has publicly declared her attendance at this gig. She said the £194 ticket, from the Football Association, was part of “stakeholder engagement” that was “offered as a thank you for successful Champions League Final delivery”.

She also received a £500 ticket for the August 15 gig attended by the mayor. She “attended as a guest of LS Events”.

Mr Treharne said in his entry in the gifts register that he accepted a £500 ticket from LS Events because he was “supporting the GLA events team with their stakeholder engagement”.

Ms Brown’s £300 ticket, for the June 21 concert, was from News UK.

Mr Khan has said that he will not stop seeking to “bang the drum for London” by attending cultural events, and would aim to follow a policy of “over-declaring” gifts received in his role as mayor.

Last month he side-stepped questions about whether he would follow Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who was also gifted Taylor Swift tickets, in repaying the value of the tickets.