Plans to spend £15.6m on new public toilets, pedestrian crossings, ‘a drug consumption room’, and other projects have been voted down by the London Assembly, after an overwhelming majority of members argued the ideas were not workable.
The proposals were tabled on Thursday as an amendment to Sir Sadiq Khan’s budget by the Assembly’s three-strong group of Green Party members, who said their spending package “would make meaningful differences in the lives of so many Londoners”.
Most of the package’s funding would have been raised by increasing the congestion charge by £1, which the Greens claimed would generate an extra £13m per year. The remaining £2.6m would be drawn from City Hall’s reserves.
The drug consumption room would have taken the form of a three-year pilot scheme, and would have followed in the footsteps of the clinic opened earlier this month in Glasgow, which is the UK’s first such facility.
At the clinic, Londoners would be able “to take their own drugs under the supervision of trained health professionals”. No drugs would be provided by those health professionals, and buying and selling drugs would still be illegal on the site.
The Greens said there was “extensive evidence” that such facilities “improve individual and community well-being and health, reduce death rates, bring users into contact with health and treatment services, and reduce drug-related crime”.
Another suggestion in the Greens’ amendment was to spend £100,000 on a London Renters’ Commission, which would “advise the mayor and design research on what model of rent control could work for London and how it could be implemented through current legislation”.
The amendment also proposed doubling annual investment in new toilets on the Tube network from £3m to £6m, spending £10m on installing pedestrian crossings at unsafe roads, and putting £1m towards a new City Hall unit which would map contaminated land across the capital.
Labour member Krupesh Hirani said the package was “unworkable”, claiming in particular that the drug consumption room idea was not legally sound, and would require support from the Home Office and Department for Health. The Greens had said it could work “if the mayor helped it to acquire a ‘Multi-Agency Agreement’ with the Metropolitan Police, local authorities, health providers, and prosecution services”.
Mr Hirani added that the mayor had already started investing millions every year on public toilets and the Assembly should “see how that goes” before committing more money towards the project.
Conservative group deputy leader Emma Best said her party was completely opposed to raising the congestion charge to an “eye-watering” £16, and she cast doubt on whether it would raise the money the Greens said it would.
She added that some of the proposals, like rent controls, were “absolutely crazy” - and, in that particular case, would have the opposite of their intended effect, as they would encourage landlords to sell up and reduce the overall supply of rental properties.
The Liberal Democrats’ Gareth Roberts agreed that raising the congestion charge by £1 was a source of concern, as it could lead to further increases later down the line, and he suggested his group was also opposed to rent controls.
The amendment failed after it was voted down by 18 votes to three. If it had gained majority support, the mayor would have been required to issue a formal response to its suggestions, though he would not have been mandated to adopt it into his budget without two thirds having voted in favour of it.
Green group leader Caroline Russell said after the vote: “While it is disappointing to see our colleagues on the Assembly speak and vote against these common-sense proposals, I want to thank the many activists, campaigners and Londoners who have worked tirelessly to get these initiatives this close to the finish line.
“I will continue to champion these critical interventions in the coming year, banging that drum until Londoners are protected from drug harm, can quickly find a toilet on the tube, and safely cross the road without fear.”
Reform UK’s sole assembly member, Alex Wilson, decried the fact that none of the other parties would agree to work with him on budgetary amendments of his own, which would have sought to create a “dedicated knife crime taskforce” of around a thousand officers within the Met Police, and to scrap the proposed tolling on the Silvertown and Blackwall Tunnels.
Tory member Susan Hall said her group could not support Mr Wilson’s proposals, as she claimed his costings were “wildly simplistic, not financially sound, and totally detached from reality”.
