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Ken Livingstone plans to get tough on the causes of crime

NEWS Shopper spoke to London Mayor Ken Livingstone when he visited Lewisham about why he thinks he should be re-elected on May 1.

Why should News Shopper readers vote for you?

Because we are now in the fifth year of falling crime. In the first two years it was cut about 2 per cent then it went to 5.9, then 6.1, then 6.5 per cent. Overall we have cut crime by 20 per cent, and we are on course for another 25 per cent cut in the next four years.

So we've replicated what happened in New York under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, using the same method - you get the police out of the car and back on the street, crime then starts to come down, and because we've got half a dozen police that always stay in the same neighbourhood getting to know the kids who get into trouble, we're getting a real reduction in anti-social behaviour and crime by young people - we're diverting them away from a life in crime.

But what about in the last 18 months, where there has been a sharp rise in gang, gun and knife crime, particularly among teenagers - what are you going to do to address this?

There's a real reduction in gun crime and knife crime overall, but there's one area, this really horrible area with teenagers killing each other, and here the reality is you've got to give kids something else to do.

For the last 20 years, evening and weekend activities for kids by local government has been cut massively.

I lobbied the government last year and they changed the law now so that it's a duty of local councils to provide evening and weekend activities, because wherever you go in London kids say there's nothing to do round here.

We've now got £79m to spend in the next two years to double the level of youth provision so we get kids off the street, into good structured activities, where they can burn off their energy, get role models, mentors, and see men that have made it, who are successful, and you give them an alternative to the value system of the gang.

You also get them into courses so they get the skills they didn't get at school.

So we're tough on crime, and we're now really being tough on the causes of crime.

Do you have plans to increase the congestion charge into south east London's outer boroughs?

We have no plans to increase the present size of the zone, nor introduce it anywhere else. It's working fine where it is.

It's a system designed for a large city centre. It isn't appropriate to make it any larger.

Do you not think anything more needs to be done to tackle congestion?

You have individual busy roads, and what you need is the local councils to look on a road by road basis what is needed, because 90 per cent of local roads are run by local councils.

If you had a big congestion charge around Lewisham town centre or Greenwich town centre, it would catch an awful lot of roads where there's no congestion problems at all.

The candidates for the London mayoral elections are:

Richard Barnbrook - British National Party
Gerard Batten - UK Independence Party
Sian Berry - Green Party
Alan Craig - Christian Peoples Alliance and Christian Party
Lindsey German - Left List
Boris Johnson - Conservative Party
Ken Livingstone - Labour Party
Winston McKenzie - Independent
Matt O'Connor - English Democrats
Brian Paddick - Liberal Democrats

3:54pm Wednesday 23rd April 2008

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