Sadiq Khan stumbled through an awkward New Year’s Eve interview in which he was put on the spot over London’s knife crime epidemic – and asked to explain why the capital was “doing so badly”.
Mr Khan was interviewed by Sky News’s Mark Austin as he prepared to welcome 2024 with a spectacular fireworks display in central London.
However, referencing a social media post by the London Mayor in which he spoke of being “humbled by the things we’ve achieved together”, Mr Austin said: “Knife crime is rising at the fastest rate in five years, knifepoint robbery is rising by more than a third. Where is the achievement in that?”
Mr Khan replied: “One knife crime, one homicide, is one too many but because of our public health approach in London, we’ve seen since I’ve been there a reduction in those under-25s injured with a knife, we’ve seen a reduction in the number of homicides.
“I’m not complacent at all but the public health approach means investing in enforcement, more police officers at a time of austerity, but also we’ve invested in youth workers and youth services as well.”
Mr Austin pointed out that official figures showed knifepoint robberies were up in London by 36 percent a year, equivalent to 8,000 incidents, in contrast to a five percent drop in the West Midlands and a 16 percent drop in Greater Manchester.
He asked: “Why is London doing so badly on knife crime and knife robberies?”
Mr Khan replied: “The biggest personal robbery is of mobile phones. Twenty or 30 years ago car manufacturers managed to reduce the theft of car stereos, reduce the thefts of Tom Toms from cars by designing away the possibility of doing so.”
Mr Austin then pointed out that his question was about the prevalence of knives in robberies, with Mr Khan insisting: “That’s because they try to steal the mobile phones.
He said: “So if you can make a second-hand phone useless to a robber or a thief that means the temptation to do so is going away.
“Enforcement’s really important so we’re using data now to make sure we have police officers targeting those parts of our city which we know are, in inverted commas, hotspots.
“So it’s a combination of using data to target the hotspots, town centres transport hubs, but also working with the mobile phone manufacturers and the platforms to make sure there is no resale value of a phone.”
In his forward to a Policy Exchange report entitled Knife Crime in the Capital in 2021, Sir Mark Rowley, who is now Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “All agree that knife crime is a major political and operational priority for policing, especially in London.
“It has been for several years and this report shows why the temporary reduction in violent types of knife crime over the last year will be just that, temporary.
“By breaking down month by month stabbing rates over the course of the pandemic, Policy Exchange shows that much of the reduction in knife crime since 2019 is attributable to coronavirus restrictions, not to a successful strategy to counter it.”
He added: “This report reveals that widely reported fatal stabbings are merely the tip of the iceberg in the knife crime data.
“Below the surface, hidden away in the most dangerous estates in the capital, hundreds of injuries are inflicted on young people by knives every year.”
