Labor will not guarantee cash to plug Met Police’s £240m ‘black hole’ to tackle gun crime

Labour’s deputy leader has not guaranteed extra money for the Metropolitan Police Service to plug what Sadiq Khan called a “black hole”. London’s mayor said in March that the force needed £240 million in extra government funding.

Ms Rayner told MyLondon that the UK economy needs to grow to ensure public services are properly funded. But she added that tax reform would mean more help for public services in the short term.

The shadow housing secretary said during a visit to the Westway Trust in North Kensington on Thursday (June 20): “Well, one of our first steps clearly is to make sure we can have thirteen thousand extra police and PCSOs on streets and cut violence in half. against women and girls and tackling things like knife crime’. She added that the Met had “lost a billion pounds since the Tories came to power”.

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“That is why Keir Starmer has determined that we will not go back to austerity. But we need to have a growth strategy to pay for our public services. So we have set out some first steps which we hope will help and ease some of the challenges people face, including measures to tackle anti-social behaviour. But what we need is economic growth.”

“Sadiq has done an extraordinary job in very difficult circumstances”

When asked if he foresaw any fight with Mr Khan over funding, the deputy Labor leader said: “I think Sadiq has done an extraordinary job in very difficult circumstances.” Ms Rayner added that the party’s proposed tax reforms – including removing a VAT exemption for private schools and further reforming non-dom tax status – would “help support public services in the short term”.

“Whether it’s a Tory council or whether it’s a Labor mayor, I think everyone will recognize that the Tories nationally have been a disaster for our public services.”

The Conservatives said in the party manifesto that it had “recruited a record number of police officers to reduce crime by more than 50 per cent”. The document adds that the Tories would “recruit an additional 8,000 full-time, fully warranted police officers to ensure one new police officer for every borough”.

The party also says: “Under the Conservatives, violent crime has fallen by 44% since 2010 and neighborhood crime has fallen by 48%. Recidivism dropped from over 30% in 2010 to 25%. We recruited 20,000 police officers. , delivered 6,000 prison places as part of the biggest prison expansion since the Victorian era and deported more than 18,000 foreign offenders since 2019 alone.”

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