A Liverpool beauty products business found itself in the middle of a social media storm after supplying £107,000 worth of products to the Home Office and Priti Patel. Tony McDonough reports

A Liverpool beauty products firm has found itself in the middle of a media storm over the Home Secretary’s eyebrows.

Late last week an online news outlet, The Byline Times, published a list of expenses claimed by the Home Office which included £77,000 spent with Liverpool-based Beautiful Brows and Lashes and £33,000 with its parent company Global Beauty Products.

This led to a flurry of speculation in the media that the Home Secretary, Priti Patel had spent the money on products for her eyebrows. However, the truth of the £107,000 expenditure easily explained.

The company had actually supplied the Home Office with hand gel when sanitizer was in short supply at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago. Beautiful Brows and Lashes director, Warren Gavin, said: “We received a call out of the blue from the UK Border Force with an urgent request for hand sanitizer for their staff who are based all over the UK. 

“Although we’re best known for our high quality eyebrow and eyelash products, we also produce and distribute a successful and cost-effective range of health and safety products, including hand gel and face masks, and have done for years. We were more than happy to oblige and dispatched the gel immediately.”

Mr Gavin said that by Saturday, the firm’s switchboard was in “meltdown”. He added: “We’d have been happy to supply them with our beauty products, as we did with the two most recent Wonder Woman movies, but in fact it was purely for hand gel sanitizer. However, if the Home Secretary fancies herself as the next Wonder Woman then we will happily supply the film company again with the appropriate makeup.”

The brand Beautiful Brows and Eyelashes is part of Global Beauty Products based at The Matchworks in Speke, south Liverpool, trading throughout Europe, Asia and the US. The company was set up 2017 and now produces beauty products for 240 brands globally, employing 22 people at its base in Liverpool.

The company, which is projected to turn over £10m this year, donated £7,000 worth of anti-bacterial spray to Merseyside Police at the outset of the pandemic in 2020.