Jeremy Corbyn has said Amber Rudd has been “completely undermined” by leaked Home Office documents suggesting government cuts are linked to the rise in violent crime, and demanded the home secretary explain herself to parliament.

The Labour leader, speaking at the launch of his party’s London local election campaign, said every Londoner had experienced the effects of cuts to police and social services.

“The daily experience of every single one of us, whatever political party you support, is that when there are no PCSOs, no Safer Neighbourhood team, you feel a sense of unease … People start to act with impunity,” he said.

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Corbyn said he would host a roundtable meeting on Tuesday that would include police officers, families who have lost children, and organisations working to end knife and gun crime.



He said the Conservatives had a record of “reckless failure” and leaked documents revealed by the Guardian on Monday showed the government was ignoring evidence from its officials.

“We always said cuts have consequences and now the Home Office’s own officials agree with us,” he said. “Today’s leaked documents make a nonsense of the Tories’ repeated claims that their cuts to police numbers have had no effect.”

Speaking in Westminster, one of the councils Labour hopes to take from the Tories at the election next month, Corbyn said he had been moved by the funerals of teenagers in his north London constituency when he was a backbench MP.

“Young people with their lives ahead of them are being ripped from our communities,” he said. “Too many families are facing the loss of a child they have nurtured in their early years, never to see the potential of that love and support realised.”

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who introduced Corbyn, said both the government and Boris Johnson, as the former mayor of London, had failed to learn the lessons about the “complex root causes” of the 2011 London riots.

“If you keep cutting, sooner or later the fabric that holds our community together will tear,” he said.

Labour sources pointed to Khan’s pledge of £45m of new money over three years for disadvantaged young people in London, and compared it with the government’s £40m serious violence strategy for the UK as a whole, of which £11m will be spent on youth services over two years.

Corbyn also pledged again that Labour would tackle antisemitism, both inside the party and elsewhere. “I know my party, the party I have been a member of for 50 years, and I know that the overwhelming majority of members are united, determined to root out any antisemitism, and to make our party the welcoming movement that is has always been,” he said.

He said he wanted to make a commitment to EU citizens in London, who are able to vote in local elections, though not general elections. “Labour will never abandon you. Labour will not use you as a bargaining chip,” he said. “You are an integral part of our city. Labour will never doubt the contribution you make to our city.”