A former Labour councillor who was controversially appointed to head a unit to reduce violent crime say she has “no problems working with politicians from all parties”.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan appointed Lib Peck in January to lead the Violence Reduction Unit, which aims to cut knife and gun crime in the capital by intervening in potential offenders’ lives at an early age.

But the posting caused controversy because Ms Peck was the former leader of Lambeth’s Labour council.

Many London politicians hit out at Mr Khan, suggesting he used the opportunity to appoint his friend rather than the best person for the job.

During a London Assembly police and crime committee meeting earlier today Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon asked Ms Peck what she was doing to stop people being concerned about someone from a political party being elected to head the unit.

Ms Peck said: “Those concerns are only from politicians, I have worked cross party before.

“I have no problem working with politicians from all parties.

“We are all in politics because we want to get things done. If we want to tackle something like this we have to come together.”

Ms Pidgeon also hit out at Ms Peck for attending a public meeting in Lambeth where she was previously a councillor.

Defending this, Ms Peck said: “I have rights as an individual and I am perfectly entitled to go to a meeting about an issue I care about.”

Assembly Member Susan Hall also spoke up about the make-up of unit.

Ms Hall said: “It’s quite a left-wing line-up. If you want to be really inclusive, why isn’t anybody else here for another group to make it inclusive.”

But Ms Peck said: “There are representatives from other groups there such as the probation service or NHS and those groups are not representing political parties.”

Speaking about what she hopes the new unit will achieve Ms Peck said: “We want to tackle violent crime in its entirety. What we are doing now is clearly not working.

“We want to see a society where violence is not accepted as the norm.”