by Frank Dobson and Trevor Phillips

Let nobody doubt how profound London's inequalities are – with deprivation and despair often cheek by jowl with people doing really well

Male unemployment in some parts of London remains at over 20 per cent. While the New Deal is helping to cut unemployment in the capital, jobless rates in some wards are ten times as high as in others.

Black and Asian youngsters are still twice as likely to be jobless.

It isn't just unemployment. Working class children are five times as likely as others to be killed or injured in a road accident.

A child in Kings Cross is five times as likely to be killed or injured in a house fire as a child up the road in Hampstead.

People in Newham, East London, are twice as likely to die before they reach 75 years of age as people in Bromley.

Infant mortality in Hackney is ten times worse than in Kingston. A quarter of Tower Hamlets families live in overcrowded accommodation.

The new Mayor of London will be uniquely well placed to bring together all the various agencies in a concerted drive to reduce these inequalities.

Our new Medical Officer of Health for London will monitor the state of London's health with a focus on the least healthy neighbourhoods and put forward practical measures to deal effectively with the causes of ill-health.

Health inequalities aren't the only inequalities. But they can be the most profound.

As Health Secretary, Frank ensured the poorest areas in London did best, with the East End and Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham at the top of the list, but there is still much to be done.

We need new practical measures to improve the skills of Londoners, to create new jobs and to open up existing vacancies to all those with the potential to fill them.

By improving those skills, we can enable more out-of-work Londoners to fill the new jobs, rather than simply attracting more commuters into the capital.

Improved training is an essential part of the task, not least in shortage skills such as information technology.

With Trevor chairing the new Police Authority, we will work with the Met to turn back the tide of crime which makes life a misery for many Londoners, particularly in the worst off neighbourhoods.

Our plan for named neighbourhood police officers for every Londoner will help bring the capital together in this challenge.

There were those who told us that we shouldn't put so much emphasis on tackling inequality and discrimination in our campaign.

But that is what drives us in politics.

We are confident that provided we are making London as a whole a cleaner, safer, healthier and more prosperous city, most decent Londoners will support us in making it a fairer city too.