Ken Livingstone blames media for the surge in knife crimes

Ken Livingstone has reignited a controversy over knife deaths by blaming the media for fuelling violent crime on London's streets.

The former mayor told a Labour hustings: "The media play a part in it. If the media create the impression in the mind of a teenager that the scale of violence out there on the streets is such that they've got to take a knife out themselves, often that knife will end up being used against them.

"As the media interest in those teenage stabbings went down, so did they go down. Now they've gone up again this year."

But Mr Livingstone's mayoral rival, Oona King, said: "This problem is not caused by the media."

And deputy mayor for policing Kit Malthouse called on him to apologise to the families of the murdered teenagers for suggesting their deaths should not be reported prominently. He said: "Each one is a tragedy Londoners should know about and learn from."