London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been accused of "gaslighting" the public by selectively using crime data to suggest the capital is becoming safer, while other figures paint a grimmer picture.
A Heated Exchange at City Hall
The accusation came from Conservative London Assembly Member Neil Garratt during the first Mayor's Question Time session of 2026. Garratt directly challenged Sir Sadiq over his recent highlighting of a falling murder rate, arguing that this "cherry-picking" of statistics creates a false narrative for ordinary Londoners.
"You are cherry picking statistics and you're trying to pretend that things are getting better," Garratt told the Mayor. He specifically pointed to knife crime robbery, describing it as "an innocent person going about their day being confronted by a violent man threatening them with a knife to hand over their valuables."
The Clash Over Conflicting Crime Data
Garratt presented data showing that total knife crime offences rose from 9,721 in 2015-16 – the final year of Boris Johnson's mayoralty – to 16,147 in 2024-25. For knife crime linked specifically to robbery, the increase was even starker, climbing from 4,494 to 10,017 over the same period.
"Every single year of your mayoralty is worse than what you inherited," Garratt asserted. "How can you tell Londoners that it's getting better?"
In response, Mayor Khan defended his record, citing a population increase of over one million since 2016 and past police funding cuts. He stated his administration had tried to fill the "massive hole left by central government" by more than doubling investment in the police and establishing a Violence Reduction Unit.
The Mayor's Defence and Homicide Focus
Sir Sadiq admitted there was "still more to do" in areas like theft but stood by his use of homicide rates as a key measure. He called it an "objective way" to track progress on violent crime.
Earlier in the week, the Mayor had hailed new Metropolitan Police figures showing 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the lowest number since 2014. He noted London's homicide rate of 1.1 per 100,000 people is now lower than other major global cities like New York, Berlin, and Toronto.
"Many people have been trying to talk London down, but the evidence tells a very different story," Khan said, arguing his dual approach of being tough on crime and its root causes is working.
The confrontation underscores the ongoing political battle over public safety in the capital, with both sides using different datasets to support their claims about the true state of violent crime in London.
