Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall on Wednesday called for the reinstatement of borough police commanders as she pledged to make London’s streets safer.
She vowed to crack down on knife crime, which has risen 22 per cent to 14,000 offences in the capital in the most recent 12-month period, and to introduce specialist units to tackle burglaries, robberies and thefts if elected in May.
Her £200m plan – which she discussed with Home Secretary James Cleverly and London Tory MPs on Tuesday – would be funded by cutting staff at City Hall, scrapping £160m of free Travelcards given to 54,000 friends and family of Transport for London workers and reforming TfL pensions.
Mr Cleverly is understood to have told the “roundtable” meeting that London’s record on crime had skewed the national downward trend.
According to the Office for National Statistics, total crime is 17 per cent lower than immediately before the pandemic.
However Labour sources said that crime rates in London were lower per person than in the rest of the country.
They said: “The unfunded commitments from the Tory candidate simply don’t add up. They’re based on revenue that doesn’t exist.”
Ms Hall will press Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley on reverting back to 32 borough commanders when he appears before the London Assembly this morning.
She believes borough-based policing – which was scrapped in 2018 due to funding constraints and replaced with 12 BCUs (basic command units) – would help Londoners to know their beat officers and improve links between councillors and senior officers.
On Thursday she will propose an amendment to Mayor Sadiq Khan’s annual budget to fund her plans.
These include spending £7m to provide schools with knife detection arches and £375,000 to provide all frontline police with access to knife-detection wands to make searches “faster, more effective and less intrusive”.
She also vowed to crack down on so-called “minor crimes” by setting up specialist units to tackle burglaries, robberies and thefts. The aim is to catch repeat offenders and dismantle organised crime networks that re-sell stolen goods.
Ms Hall said: “Sadiq Khan has arrogantly ignored Londoners’ concerns about crime for eight years and allowed the Met Police to fall into special measures.
“1,000 people have been killed under his mayoralty, and knife crime is out of control.
“As mayor, I will get a grip on crime and make our streets safe, just as I did when I was leader of Harrow council. I will invest £200 million to give the police the resources that Sadiq Khan has denied them so they canâ¯keepâ¯usâ¯safe.”
Mr Cleverly said: “Let’s not forget, it is the mayor who is responsible for policing in London and for too long Londoners have struggled with Sadiq Khan; he just ignores that responsibility.
“But with Susan Hall as mayor that will no longer be the case. Her plan for London, to back our police and get a grip on crime, is the right one.
“Londoners cannot give Sadiq Khan permission to ignore them for another four years, and must show him the door on May 2.”
According to the Greater London Authority’s own figures, there were 1,512 posts at City Hall last September (equivalent to 1,474 full-time jobs). Of these, 1,346 staff were in posts.
When Mr Khan became mayor in May 2016 there were 817 posts.
Mr Khan’s 2024/25 budget includes an extra £151m for policing, taking the amount being spent fighting crime to about £5bn a year. Of the £37 annual increase in his share of average bills, £13 will be used to fund the Met police.
Labour sources said it was “completely unrealistic” to expect that scrapping “nominee passes” for TfL friends and family would generate £160m, which is the face value of the zones 1-6 annual Travelcards.
They said that the “revenue foregone” to TfL from the perk is £7m a year and its “overall value as an employee benefit far exceeds the revenue foregone”.
A source close to Mr Khan said: “To balance the books her plans would require a huge increase in council tax – by law this would mean a London-wide referendum costing tens of millions of pounds. Without it, devastating cuts would be required to key public services. Her plans are deeply irresponsible.”
