Sadiq Khan’s new Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, was given a grilling at City Hall by the Chair of the Committee who she previously called ‘racist’ and ‘climate denying’ on social media.Susan Hall told Ms Comer-Schwartz that she feels her life was put in danger as a result of a tweet she had published. The new Deputy Mayor apoogised for any harm caused, but did not apologise for the content of the tweet.
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00:00So how inclusive was it to issue a tweet that said we cannot let a racist climate change
00:07denying Tory be mayor?
00:11How inclusive was that?
00:12Unashamed.
00:13I don't think that people with racist views or misogynistic views or any views that would
00:21fuel or enable hate and I think that political rhetoric sometimes is a real, as we saw in
00:28the riots earlier this summer, we have to all be really accountable when we hold public
00:33office about those views.
00:35And I just confirm I resent being called racist by somebody who's never met me, who doesn't
00:40know me, as well as a climate change denier.
00:44I think to put things like that out when you don't know somebody at all is abhorrent.
00:49I'll go on since this has affected me badly.
00:54I wouldn't want to have affected you badly and I really do deeply understand as a woman
01:00in public office how difficult those issues are so I would like to apologise to you, woman
01:05to woman.
01:06I would like to thank you for that apology.
01:08The only thing I will say is, and I will say this, is hope not hate have put thousands,
01:15tens of thousands of pictures all over London with racist written across my face and I knock
01:21on doors and I stand and I talk to black members of, black Londoners explaining that
01:28actually they've got their opinion of me through something they've read which they admit to.
01:33This happened to me last week.
01:35Putting stuff out like that is very, very dangerous because people automatically assume
01:41if they read it, it might be right and this absolutely isn't right and to be called a
01:46racist when you know you're not is one of the most abhorrent things that can ever happen
01:52to you.
01:53We'll move on and thank you for your apology but anybody else thinking that they can just
01:58do that without knowing a person, without knowing what they believe in, they should
02:03bloody well make sure they don't because it has put me in danger and it is grossly unfair.