Sir Sadiq Khan has been told that his story does not add up after he blocked a crucial £50 million deal, which will result in police cuts, according to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. The Mayor of London barred the force from using US tech firm Palantir's artificial intelligence technology to speed up criminal investigations and detect corrupt officers.
Sir Mark Rowley told Times Radio: "We've got to shrink by 1,150 people. That will be 4,400 people smaller than the Met will be than when I started as Commissioner three and a half years ago. That's really tough. One of the ways we're trying to deal with it is by automating some of our bureaucracy so we can save that money without damaging the frontline. Now we don't have that technology, we're going to be making hundreds of cuts to frontline services, which is not what I wanted to do this year. We had a plan to avoid cutting frontline services by using clever technology. Now we won't have that technology at the speed that we were planning. We will be cutting some frontline services."
A spokesperson for Sir Sadiq's team claimed today that he did not think that the deal represented adequate value for money. The Mayor's team previously said that "a broader question remains over whether a company's values and ethics should be considered during public procurement." They added: "The mayor believes Londoners would want public funding to go only to companies that share the city's values, but this is not currently possible under procurement law."
Conservative London Assembly Member Neil Garrett, Chairman of the London Assembly's Budget and Performance Committee, said that the Met's representative, Interim Chief Financial Officer Adrian Wight, "looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up" when asked during a meeting on June 1 if it were clear what had gone wrong and what the service needs to do differently.
He told the Express: "The mayor's story doesn't really hang together. They're talking about difficulties with Palantir and not sharing City Hall's values, but then the only real explanation they're offering is this technical saying about procurement, which seemed to be a surprise to the Met, and the end result of all the Mayor's politicking is we're now going to lose even more police officers in London."
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: "The Mayor fully supports the Met using modern technology to drive efficiencies and improve the performance of the police. However, as with all procurement, we must always ensure the correct processes are followed and that Londoners get value for money. In this case, the Met did not present its procurement strategy for approval, as required, and the process followed by the Met did not adequately demonstrate value for money for Londoners for a proposed contract at this value. Given the tight budgetary constraints of the police, it is even more important that robust processes are followed when awarding large contracts. The Met does face a difficult financial situation, which stems from the huge cuts implemented by the previous government and the significant underfunding of the Met's capital city responsibilities. The Mayor has already doubled the policing budget from City Hall and he will continue to do everything he can to support the Met and secure the national funding needed for policing in our city."
