Boris Johnson's £300,000 water cannon end up as scrap metal

Political reporter(wp/es):

The water cannon that were bought by Boris Johnson but never used on the streets of London have ended up as scrap metal, it emerged today.

The three riot control vehicles were purchased from the German federal police for £85,000 in 2014 but ended up costing London taxpayers more than £322,000 after undergoing modifications.

In 2015 the then Home Secretary Theresa May refused permission for them to be used by the Met police - leaving them consigned to a storage yard in Gravesend.

Today Mayor Sadiq Khan revealed the 25-year-old vehicles had been scrapped for £3,675 each after two years of failing to find a buyer. “Absolutely nobody wanted them,” a City Hall source said.

The £11,025 raised from the sale - to Reclamations (Ollerton) Ltd scrapyard in Newark - is part of a £13.2m fund announced today by Mr Khan for 72 youth projects to tackle the root causes of serious violent crime.

Mr Khan said: “For too long, London taxpayers have had to bear the brunt of Boris Johnson’s appalling botched water cannon deal. This has been another waste of taxpayers’ money by Boris Johnson. Londoners continue to live with his vanity. 

“I am pleased we have managed to finally get rid of them and I made an election promise to Londoners that I would claw back as much of this cash as possible,  and pump it into helping young people at risk of being affected by crime and giving them better life opportunities.”

The purchase of the Ziegler Wasserwerfer 9000 cannon came to be known by his critics as one of Mr Johnson’s greatest follies.

They were bought for £85,022 by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, on the advice of police chiefs, in the wake of the 2011 London riots.

But in 2015 Mrs May refused to licence their use on the UK mainland, saying they could cause “primary, secondary and tertiary injuries” such as spinal fracture, concussion, eye injury and blunt trauma and risked inflaming community tensions.

After taking office in 2016, Mr Khan vowed to sell the cannon as he revealed that a further £237,812 had been spent bringing them up to scratch. 

This included £3,100 on sirens, £4,500 on “Battenberg” police vehicle markings and £970 on radio and CD players.

Mr Khan hoped to sell them for up to £43,000 each to an “ethical” purchaser. But the Ministry of Defence, which handled the sale, was unable to find a buyer, prompting the decision to scrap the vehicles.

Stephen Greenhalgh, who was Mr Johnson’s deputy mayor for policing, today accused Mr Khan of “gesture politics”.

He told the Standard: “I think it’s an absolute waste of money by the Mayor. This is something tactically you want in the event of extreme violence and public disorder to keep crowds at a distance.

“Water cannons are not about an escalation of force. They are civilian vehicles, rather than armoured military machines. They are less harmful than a metal baton at close range, far less dangerous then firing baton rounds and more discriminating than horses charging into a crowd of people – all tactics that the police can lawfully use now.”

Up to 42,000 young Londoners will benefit from the latest round of funding from the £45m Young Londoners Fund.

It supports projects that aim to show a positive way forward through education, sport and cultural activities. It is part of the public health approach to fighting violent crime being taken by the Mayor. 

Mr Khan said: “By giving young Londoners meaningful things to do, I am doing everything I possibly can to help ensure they make the right choices and do not follow the wrong path.

“Huge cuts in national government funding have had a big impact on London youth services and policing, which we should all be in no doubt has contributed to a rise in violent crime.”