What has Sadiq done to tackle crime in our city?

With under six weeks to go until the mayoral election on May 2, the Standard launches a series of audits into Sadiq Khan’s record. Today Home Affairs Editor Martin Bentham examines crime

- Martin Bentham

WHEN the scathing report by Lady Elish Angiolini into how Wayne Couzens had managed to remain in the police to murder Sarah Everard was published recently, the chairman of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee said it exposed the “rotten foundations” of the Met.

But while most of the focus has been on the Met itself and what its leadership is doing to fix its many problems, voters are also asking what Sadiq Khan has been doing during his eight years in City Hall. The Mayor has the task of supervising the Met as part of his job, in the same way as police and crime commissioners oversee forces in other parts of the country, and has been responsible for the Met since 2016.

His tenure coincides with a lengthy period in which the rot blighting the force festered unchecked for years. That has led critics to argue that Mr Khan was largely asleep on the job.

It’s not just the reports by Lady Angiolini and Baroness Casey that highlight this point, but also the fact that the Met remains in special measures because of “systemic failings in performance and governance” and other deficiencies.

In Mr Khan’s defence, the second sentence of a City Hall statement setting out his record pointed to “devastating cuts to policing and youth services over the last decade”. His aides cite falls in “homicides, gun crime and the number of young people being injured by knives” since 2016 as among his achievements.

Teenage killings and knife crime

The Mayor points to a reduction in serious knife injuries among the under-25s since he took office and has poured funds into the violence reduction unit as part of an attempt to divert vulnerable young Londoners away from crime.