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Priti Patel tells Sadiq Khan 'to spend his money on police not PR' after he blamed knife attacks on Tory cuts

The new Home Secretary challenged Sadiq Khan today over claims that he is wasting money on public relations that could go towards crime-fighting.

In a letter to the Mayor, Priti Patel demanded his “personal reassurances that you are putting as much resource as you possibly can into the Metropolitan Police Service”.

She alluded to Tory allegations that Mr Khan has doubled his PR budget at City Hall from £1.3 million to £2.5 million.

Ms Patel’s four-page letter was sent ahead of their first official meeting next week, and in response to letters from him blaming cuts in the policing budget for London’s wave of knife attacks.

Attempting to turn the tables, she said: “Londoners must be confident their Police and Crime Commissioner is doing everything in his power to put an end to this senseless violence. I want to see what robust plans you have in place to reduce violent crime in the capital. I understand there have been 90 homicides so far this year. That is 90 too many.”

Ms Patel is the first member of Boris Johnson’s new Cabinet to take on the Labour Mayor and her letter suggests she is being marked out to campaign in the 2020 mayoral elections. She also called on Mr Khan to support the Government’s expansion of stop-and-search powers to curb knife crime.

Ms Patel has refused to spell out how many extra police London will get, after Mr Khan wrote to her demanding an assurance the Met will get at least 5,000 of the 20,000 more promised nationally by the Prime Minister. She told him she was talking to the Met “on the allocations of these officers”. Mr Khan claimed the Government has refused” to provide the resources we desperately need”.

On immigration, Ms Patel rejected his warnings that EU citizens could face a Windrush-style scandal as “inappropriate”, and urged him to encourage Londoners from EU countries to take out settled status. A spokesman for the Mayor said Ms Patel was “playing political games” on policing, and EU citizens had become “bargaining chips”.