Sadiq Khan accused of being a 'bystander' as Mayor put on blast for capital's 'crime epidemic'

Ms Cunningham told GB News of her plan to rebuild London: "It's about restoring trust and making London safe again. We hear that they haven't been fully vetting officers.

"A man accused of raping a child was allowed to join the Met in 2020, after a vetting panel overturned his rejection because of diversity targets. And I think this is endemic of what's going on in the Met, they've kind of forgotten why they're here."

She added: "We have 32,000 officers, and I don't see any of them. When you go to Oxford Street or areas which are high crime areas, I don't see any police on the streets. And so I'd like to restore visible policing and I'd like to have a zero tolerance approach to crime.

"Even shoplifting, it might just cost £20, £30, but it's very corrosive to the community, when you see the same person walking out, it's intimidating to the staff, it prices up. And I think there has been a very kind of lax attitude to crime.

"And we are living in a rape epidemic, knife crime epidemic, shoplifting, robbery, you name it. And frankly, Londoners shouldn't have to put up with it anymore because the first duty of a Mayor is to keep us safe."

Criticising Sir Sadiq, Ms Cunningham said: "Sadiq Khan has acted like almost like a bystander, but he is the Police and Crime Commissioner. He sets the budget, he sets the targets, he sets the priorities.

"And let's not forget, while violent crime was going up, he created specialist squads to monitor hate crime words. And so my priority would be to task special forces to target the violent crime that matters. Knife crime, rape."

Calling for change in how London deals with rape crime in the capital, the Reform candidate told GB News: "Rape is really an epidemic. I speak to so many victims that the Met look at them and go, 'you know what? We're not going to go ahead with it because there's not enough evidence', and that's got to change.

"Women have to have trust in the police that they're going to support them in a prosecution, and that's not happening right now.

"So you'd have to redirect them to what they're focused on. And if the commissioner, if anyone at the top is not making that happen, then he's got to go."

Condemning Sir Mark Rowley and Sir Sadiq for denying the existence of grooming gangs in London, Ms Cunningham said: "Mark Rowley and Sadiq Khan looked at us and said there were no grooming gangs in London, and then turned around after public pressure and said there were 9,000 that we're going to review. That's just not on, that's not acceptable."

Recalling her past business ventures, the Reform candidate was asked how she can be trusted to run a city as significant as London.

She responded: "Like many entrepreneurs in the past, I've set up small companies over the years to try out different ideas and some became inactive.

"And when they become dormant, admin lapses. And that happens to hundreds of thousands of dormant companies every year.

"There was never any wrongdoing, it was a dormant company being struck off, and Companies House routinely does that. It's designed to kind of clear dead companies out to the register."

Ms Cunningham addd: "I think that happened to over 600,000 companies last year, and lots of people set up small companies to test ideas, side projects and startups that never really trade in the end. And that's what happened.

"It's got nothing to do with trust. It's actually one of the companies I put a lot of money in, and lost a lot of money. I took risk with that and, and I think that's something we should encourage, entrepreneurship."

Quizzed on her stance on colleague Sarah Pochin's calls to ban the Burka, she backed her fellow Reform member.

Ms Cunningham told GB News: "I think we should ban all face coverings, because I think in an open society you shouldn't go around covering your face. And I have prosecuted women in a burka in court and the judge says you can't remove it.

"I asked the judge can we please have her remove the burka, I made an application and the judge said no, these are religious sensitivities and I had to prosecute someone in a burqa.

"So I think all face coverings should be subject to stop and search or being stopped by the police."

She concluded: "Covering your face has nothing to do with the religion, it's tradition. It comes from Wahhabism, it comes from very extreme traditions of I would say the religion or the region, but there's nothing in the religion that says you have to cover your face."