Meeting London’s Current and Future Policing Needs

I really want to echo what Bernard just said. I think it is a very fair summary of the position.  Clearly there are going to be continuing demands for economy from the Treasury.  We are going to have to make the case for London.  We have been here before.  This was an argument that colleagues will remember we had four or five years ago.  We were successful in getting funding to meet the needs of the city.  I appreciate very much what Bernard says about his determination to continue to take out costs and obviously we will try to be as useful as we can.  However, my view is that if you are going to police a growing city properly, a city whose population is going to grow just in this decade probably to 9 million people, if you are going to keep police out on the beat in the way that everybody around this place wants to see
them then we are going to have to make the argument for proper funding for policing in London.  That is part of the purpose obviously of the Mayoralty and of my role as the occupant of MOPAC.

Murad Qureshi AM:  Mr Mayor, you can say that but I can give you instances where people have been burgled and whereas before they have gone to a local police station they have ended up going to the other end of the borough in Belgravia to pursue their insurance claims.  I am not sure that is offering the residential parts of Westminster the service that they may get in other parts of town.  That is the premise of my question.  Can I also move on to --

Boris Johnson (Mayor of London):  If you have particular evidence of people having to travel a great distance to get to police station, obviously we will look at that.  As I said in my earlier answer, it is difficult for me to describe the kind of provision that people have in that part of the city off the top of my head but we would be more than happy to come back with greater detail.