Boris Johnson says poor schools helped cause riots

Boris Johnson wants to take on strategic oversight of schools if re-elected as London mayor, claiming only a systemic fight against educational underachievement can tackle the social exclusion that he believes lay behind last summer's riots.
Johnson, who has already launched an inquiry into the state of the capital's education, told the Guardian on Friday that he believed some schools in London were "chillingly bad", adding that it was unacceptable to have 55% of young black men unemployed.

But the mayor went further than before by making a pitch to be given more power over local authorities to tackle illiteracy and innumeracy, arguing that education was the best antidote to the "nihilism" and exclusion revealed by the riots. Several London boroughs already face growing interventionism from central government as part of Michael Gove's education reforms.

Johnson said: "The biggest shock for me from the riots was the sheer sense of nihilism – perhaps I should not have been shocked, but in my view literacy and numeracy are the best places to start. In seven particular boroughs in London one in four children are leaving functionally illiterate. In a few schools it is nearer 50%. We have to intervene at an earlier stage, and I think the mayor can help."
Johnson's aides argue that his battle to reduce joblessness in the capital, and prevent new jobs from going only to highly motivated foreigners, will be hampered if he has no role over standards or in planning the extra 100,000 school places needed in London.

In the interview, he was also unapologetic about the way he campaigned for a cut in the 50p top rate of income tax in this week's budget, even though post-budget polls show the cut is opposed by Londoners by a margin of 55% to 35%.

He said: "I have always argued that London has got to be tax-competitive. I think it is crazy to go on endlessly with a tax rate that is amongst the highest in the G20."
However, he did not defend George Osborne's so-called "granny tax", saying: "I am not the chancellor of the exchequer. I did not write the budget."

He instead repeatedly referred to his decision to make the freedom pass available for 24 hours a day to Londoners from the age of 60, saying: "It is worth several hundred pounds a year and the single biggest reason for older people to be grateful to this administration."

He said: "It may be some aspects of the budget are not going down very well. I am not convinced that I will be necessarily associated with those measures. It is not my blooming budget and it is not necessarily one that I would have written. There is plenty we can do in London to help the poorest and the needy."
Labour will try to pin the blame for the "granny tax" on Johnson, saying he was the leading advocate of the cut in the top rate of tax, and therefore must be responsible for the decision to fund it through freezing pensioner allowances. There are 1.2 million people in London aged over 60, and traditionally they have been inclined to vote Conservative.