Ken Livingstone offers young Londoners a new deal

Ken Livingstone

Thursday, 17, Apr 2008 11:33

Ken Livingstone will today reveal his policy to expand youth services in London as part of his bid to be re-elected as mayor of London.

At the launch of his latest election manifesto, A New Deal for Young Londoners, in Kilburn this morning, Mr Livingstone will say his proposals will "give young Londoners a voice".

The incumbent mayor says he intends to double youth provision in London, including proposals to spend £78 million on a programme to set up youth centres and improve youth services throughout the capital.

Mr Livingstone is expected to say: "For too long Londoners have said that young people in this city don’t have enough to do outside school and they are not given the opportunities they need to play their full part, but I want to change this as part of the new priorities of the next four years, pumping in nearly eighty million pounds for youth projects."

The mayor's proposals follow the deaths of 27 teenagers – 22 of whom were black - in mostly gang related incidents over which he has previously been criticised.

It also follows the publication of figures by the Metropolitan police yesterday which showed that incidents of gun crime in London have increased by nearly nine per cent in the past year.

The Met's statistics show 246 incidents of 'Trident gun crime' were recorded between April 2007 and March 2008, 8.8 per cent above the 226 incidents seen in the preceding 12 months.

Operation Trident is the Met's effort to tackle black-on-black gun violence in the capital, where highly-publicised cases have sparked fear of gun crime across the UK.

The Tories' London mayoral challenger, Boris Johnson, unveiled his four-point plan helping the victims of crime earlier this week, saying more needs to be done to help those who were affected by the 862,032 total notifiable offences seen in the city in 2007/08.

Mr Livingstone, who campaigned against gun crime in south London on Tuesday, said Mr Johnson's voting record showed he could not be trusted to deal with these issues.