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London Mayor defiant over water cannon purchase, despite failing to win Home Secretary’s approval (2 April 2015)
Date: 02/04/2015
London mayor Boris Johnson has again defended his purchase of three secondhand water cannon from Germany, which he is unable to deploy on the streets of the capital because Home Secretary Theresa May has not given her approval for their use in the UK.
The mayor spent £218,000 on the three water cannon in June 2014, following the London riots in 2011.
Mr Johnson maintains that the police requested them – but Labour has braded them a “white elephant”. Mr Johnson has said, however, that he intends to keep the water cannon – and feels he will be able to win approval for their use from a future Home Secretary.
“The police requested them, they have bought them at a very good price, they have them, they train on them, there is a vanishingly remote possibility they might actually need them or use them.
“In that event, I have no doubt at all that any Home Secretary would readily issue a licence.”
Mr Johnson said that the issue of not having a licence was “a bit of an irrelevance”.
David Cameron indicated that he would be happy for the water cannon to be licensed for use, but the Home Secretary has insisted that they must be tested first to assess the risks of injury to protesters or rioters. Mr Johnson has said that he would be happy to be “blasted” in trials to prove that water cannon are safe – despite the fact that one protester in Stuttgart was blinded in the eye after being targeted by a water cannon in 2012.
Shadow London Minister Sadiq Khan told the Evening Standard newspaper that the purchase of water cannon was “a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money”.
Mr Khan said that the money spent on water cannon would have been better spent on “getting more police officers on the beat in London”.
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