Sadiq Khan 'asleep at the wheel' on Met oversight, minister claims

Sadiq Khan has been "asleep at the wheel" and is "letting the city down" over his oversight of the Met Police, a Conservative minister has claimed.

The criticism from Policing Minister Kit Malthouse follows the Met being put into a form of special measures.

But Mr Khan, who has oversight of the force as mayor of London, said he welcomed the decision.

He added he told the former police commissioner to quit despite opposition from Priti Patel and Boris Johnson.

Conservative Mr Malthouse told the Commons his government had funded an extra 2,599 Met Police officers over the last three years, which he said gave the force the highest ever number of officers.

"By contrast, as many Londoners will attest, the mayor has been asleep at the wheel and is letting the city down," he said, highlighting how teenage murders reached a record high in the capital last year.

Calling on Mr Khan to "get a grip", the Home Office minister added: "I don't know how much more serious it can get for London's police force.

"This is the first time in their history they have been put into special measures.

"They are supposedly our premier, our biggest police force, and the primary accountability is the mayor of London... He has to step forward and do his job."

by BBC London political editor Tim Donovan

In the Commons the debate was highly-charged and focused more on who was to blame politically than how to right what's rotten in London's police force.

The Policing Minister Kit Malthouse launched a fairly savage attack on London's mayor Sadiq Khan, saying the buck stopped with him.

He should "lean in" to the problem and not run away, had been "asleep at the wheel" and was "blaming everyone else", he said.

Labour MPs attacked the minister for his partisan approach, and he had to apologise for not circulating the "political attack" elements of his speech to the Labour spokeswoman and the deputy speaker beforehand.

Retort came fast and furious from City Hall, which said the mayor had been quick to point out and act upon the Metropolitan Police's problems.

There'd been years of "massive cuts" under the Tories, and Kit Malthouse had been part of the "do-nothing brigade", they said.

Mr Malthouse said this would never have happened under his watch when he was deputy mayor for policing in Boris Johnson's first term as London's mayor.

He said Mr Khan and the current deputy mayor, Sophie Linden, should consider their positions.

Labour MP Chris Bryant reminded MPs that Mr Malthouse was in charge when the phone-hacking scandal exploded into the open.

Research from the Commons Library shows that when Mr Malthouse started as deputy mayor in 2008, there were 31,014 police officers in the Met.

In 2013 - the year after he left - it was down to 29,340.

However, Mr Khan told BBC London he had been "vindicated" by the decision of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS).

The mayor said he had been expressing concerns around trust and perception in the police service "for some time", as well as acting on cases such as the botched Stephen Port murder investigation and the Charing Cross scandal.

"We had an action plan around transparency, accountability and trust in the face of opposition from the home secretary, the prime minister and the then commissioner," he said.

Mr Khan added he was the first to tell former police commissioner Cressida Dick to go: "It was me, not the home secretary, who made the decision for the commissioner to go after I lost trust and confidence in her ability to address these issues and to come up with a plan."

Asked whether political division was preventing proper scrutiny, the mayor claimed the home secretary was "refusing" to allow him to be in the same room as her for interviews with the two shortlisted candidates hoping to take over from Dame Cressida.

He said: "My understanding, as of today, is we will be interviewing separately not together, which doesn't appear to me the sort of teamwork Londoners expect from their home secretary and their mayor. What I think we should be doing is interviewing them together to reach a joint decision."

Mr Khan said he wanted the new Met Police Commissioner to be a "reforming" leader who "understands the concerns of Londoners".

He added: "[The new commissioner] has got to make sure that he has a plan, not just to address the critical issues and divide of the last year but also a plan to win back the the trust of Londoners."

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