How are you supporting London’s children throughout the summer holidays, particularly those vulnerable young people at risk of becoming involved in crime?

My Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) places young people at the heart of its work with a focus on youth work, schools and diversionary activities. These interventions take place all year round to support young people from some of London’s most disadvantaged communities. Young people are often vulnerable to exploitation, poverty and violence. This includes supporting young people at transitional periods of their life through our schools Stepping Stones programme, as well as helping young people in custody through the DIVERT and ENGAGE programmes, offering opportunities away from crime. I have invested more than ever before into violence reduction initiatives this year, and we are working to support more young people as COVID restrictions continue to be eased.

In addition, we have concentrated investment in areas most affected by violence. Our £6 million MyEnds programme is funding community-led responses to violence in eight neighbourhoods across London. The VRU has also recently launched a new after-school programme. The Stronger Future Fund aims to improve educational outcomes, employability prospects and mental health for young people aged between 10 and 18.

The MPS has a new six-point strategy to address violence in London, including prioritising early Intervention, dismantling gangs and intervening on drugs and guns. My multi-agency summer violence programme of action will reflect and assist this strategy. Yesterday I launched a Family Fun season as part of my Let’s Do London campaign as we know that creative activities open up new and positive life paths for young people.

Is it fair to say, Mr Mayor, that most of your crime prevention activities aimed at young people, as well as your enforcement practices, are driven now by data and that you are targeting areas where there is a propensity for violence among young people?

Yes, that is a fair summary. We are focusing more of our resources and our attention because of the data we have on those areas where there is higher youth violence. By the way, if you map those parts of London with where there are the least facilities, you will not be surprised that they overlap. These are areas starved, if you like, of youth facilities and so we are focused on giving them the youth facilities they deserve. The bonus for us is they are less likely to get involved in violent crime.

If we can go back to the enforcement side, which is quite an important aspect of this - they are both important but in terms of this summer in particular - I have raised this question with you before. You and the MPS on both sides and local authorities will be telling their communities what is happening in their areas. Is the MPS engaging with specific consultation areas within those communities to say, “Look, this is what we are doing”, so that you are telling them that we are going to do this crime prevention, but we are also going to be targeting individuals with a propensity to inflict violence on their communities, and we want the community on side.

Is that going to take place? I am a great supporter of our police here in London, but it has been a weakness about some of the strategies, particularly earlier last year about when they went into areas where the community wanted them to go in to have more high-profile policing but actually never told people what was going to happen in those areas. Do you think that the MPS has learned from some of those issues?

The MPS is quite keen to be talking to those communities and saying, “You know what? Because you want to be safer, we are going to be having more police officers in your community, working with you to make sure in particular young people are safer”.

At the same time as we will be saying, “We are providing these facilities to keep young people busy”, what we have is probably not just greater multi-agency working than before, but also greater multi-layered policing. For example, the criticism you would have as a former councillor would be that your neighbourhood officers are sometimes complaining privately to you that often others from the police come into a community and they do not know about it. What we have now is really good working across London with the Violence Suppression Units, which are officers who know their communities, working really closely with the Violent Crime Task Force, which comes into the areas we are particularly worried about, working closely with the Territorial Support Group (TSG), Trident and so forth.  That multi-layered approach means better policing and - you are spot on - police officers saying to communities, “We are here for you because you want us to be here for you”, and we buy in their goodwill because the public are the eyes and ears the police rely upon. We police by consent.

You are spot on. This summer we are seeing probably greater partnership working than ever before in relation to policing their communities and in relation to youth provision and communities, trying to get mums, dads, big brothers, big sisters and carers on side as well.

Thank you very much, Mr Mayor.