Tories unveil £104 million fund to fight violent crime

Sadiq Khan needs to cut the millions extra he has spent on staff, City Hall waste and TfL perks and invest in a new fund designed to tackle London’s crime epidemic, according to the Conservative group at City Hall.

As part of the Mayor’s budget process, GLA Conservatives Leader Susan Hall has produced a fully costed plan which would see £104 million spent on tackling violent crime. This investment would be paid for by reversing Sadiq Khan’s decision to spend millions more on staff, bureaucracy and extortionate TfL perks.  

The £104 million Violent Crime Emergency Fund would be 20 times the size of the Mayor’s core contribution to the Violence Reduction Unit and could be used to put an additional 1598 police officers on the streets or improve crime prevention programmes.

The GLA Conservatives have urged the Mayor to cut back on the millions of pounds extra that he has spent on waste since being elected nearly four years ago. Among other measures, the plan sets out how the Mayor should:

• Reduce the City Hall staff bill by £23.5 million, which has risen by nearly £30 million since Khan came to office.

• Cut TfL’s nominee passes perk, which entitles friends and family of TfL staff to free travel.

• Reduce the amount of time that TfL staff spend on trade union duties in work time. Again, this has increased since 2016 at an additional cost to TfL of £3 million.

• Scrap his blanket ban on junk food ads on the TfL estate, which is costing TfL £13 million every year.

The plan also advocates cutting the Mayor’s non-policing precept by 1.95 percent – an effective tax cut.

Sadiq Khan will have the opportunity to accept or reject this plan over the coming weeks.

Commenting, GLA Conservative Leader Susan Hall AM said:

“Politics is all about choices, and there can be no doubt that this Mayor has consistently and shamelessly chosen to spend taxpayers’ cash on City Hall waste and frivolous vanity projects instead of keeping our city safe.

“Sadiq Khan is fond of blaming the Government for London’s sky-high crime rates, but our plan shows that this is nothing more than shameless buck-passing, with the Mayor desperately trying to blame others for his own failures. Our fully-costed proposal proves that Khan has the money available to put an additional 1598 police officers on our streets – he is just complacently choosing not to.

“With 99 days to go until the mayoral election, Sadiq Khan still has time to change his ways and finally focus all of his efforts on making London safe. By wholeheartedly adopting our plan, the Mayor could prove all those who say he is more interested in press officers than police officers wrong. This really is Sadiq Khan’s last chance to finally show that he can be a Mayor for all Londoners."