Jeremy Clarkson claims daughter can't go shopping as London overrun with gangs

Jeremy Clarkson has claimed his daughter is scared to go shopping in London because her local shopping centre is overrun with gangs.

The 62-year-old former Top Gear presenter - who recently proposed the government should scrap the NHS to save money - has complained the police are not targeting crime on the streets of the capital because they are wasting their time punishing middle class drug users.

Clarkson wrote in his column in The Times: "My daughter, who lives in a leafy part of London, tells me she can no longer go to the local shopping centre because it is permanently full of gangs with bats and blades. And they can do whatever they want because they know for a fact that the police are not coming."

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The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host went on: "They’re not coming because they are all busy trying to catch Fiona and Rupert with a bit of powder, or, more likely, they’re standing around on the pavement, with their hands in their pockets, watching a group of eco-herberts who’ve glued themselves to the road."

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Clarkson has three children from his marriage to second wife Frances Cain - daughters Emily and Katya as well as son Finlo.

And his solution to solving the crime problems in London is to privatise policing.

He said: "When well-off people look at the local state school and decide it isn’t good enough, they educate their kids privately instead. It’s the same story with the NHS. So what’s going to stop the residents of a neat little village in Surrey employing their own private police force? And then appointing their own court system to decide how the miscreants should be executed? It happens elsewhere in the world."

The Clarkson's Farm star - who is said to have a net worth of £55.8 million - said recently he believes the best policy to save the UK economy is not to tax more but spend less - by getting rid of the National Health Service.

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Clarkson recently had to close the steak restaurant he had opened at his Diddly Squat Farm after receiving an enforcement notice form the local council.