Priti Patel has told the Commons she had had “extensive discussions” with the head of the Metropolitan police before officers broke up a peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard at the weekend, saying that people should be allowed to lay flowers. But, in her first criticism of the gathering, the home secretary agreed the vigil had been “hijacked” by protesters and that undermining faith in the police would ultimately fail victims. Her statement came before protesters took to the streets of central London for the second consecutive evening, blocking off traffic on Westminster Bridge. Hundreds of campaigners from Reclaim These Streets chanted and held banners while police halted oncoming cars. The demonstrators then moved to the Met headquarters of Scotland Yard chanting “shame on you” and “our streets” as officers looked on. After the crowd was given an ultimatum to go home or be detained for breaching coronavirus restrictions there were multiple arrests. Johnson chaired a meeting of the criminal justice taskforce on Monday, attended by the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, as well as the justice secretary and the attorney general, where he said the government would pledge an immediate doubling of the Safer Streets fund to £45m to improve street lighting and CCTV. The government also announced it would roll out a pilot of “project vigilant”, an approach taken by Thames Valley police where undercover officers monitor predators in clubs and bars, as well as increased patrols as people leave at closing time. Johnson said at the close of the meeting that Everard’s killing had “unleashed a wave of feeling about women not feeling safe at night”. He said he hoped the steps would provide immediate greater reassurance. “Ultimately, we must drive out violence against women and girls and make every part of the criminal justice system work to better protect and defend them.” he said. On Monday the Met said a postmortem on Everard’s body was inconclusive as to the cause of death, after the 33-year-old’s remains were found in woodland in Kent. An inquest into her death is expected to be opened and adjourned this week. A serving Met officer has been charged with her murder. Patel, making a statement to MPs about events on Clapham Common in south London on Saturday, which prompted calls for Dick to resign, said she had made it plain that local residents bringing flowers was “absolutely the right thing to do”. However, Patel did not explicitly say whether she had expressed a view on how officers should act if a mass gathering went ahead without police permission. Police violently removed and arrested some attendees on the basis that they were breaking Covid rules. The home secretary hinted she had some sympathy with the police’s view that the vigil had been hijacked, in further signs that the Home Office is prepared to protect Dick. Patel told MPs her Tory colleague Fay Jones was “absolutely right” after Jones said she was “shocked at the way in which Saturday night’s vigil was policed, the situation demanded sensitivity and compassion, something which was evidently lacking.” Fay continued: “But I’m also shocked that what started as a peaceful and important vigil turned into a protest with photographs showing ‘ACAB’ signs, which stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’. “I’m concerned that a young woman’s [alleged] murder could be hijacked by those who would seek to defund the police and destabilise our society, making it even harder for women to come forward and report assaults.” Labour demanded that Patel publish minutes of the meetings she held with the Met, with the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, accusing ministers of a “chronic failure” over violence against women and girls. While both Patel and Boris Johnson have expressed concern about the policing of the vigil, they retain confidence in Dick. In her statement Patel said she had asked police for a report as well as requested a review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Johnson said he was “very concerned” and promised the government would make sure women felt “properly heard and addressed” when they made complaints of sexual assault or harassment. “The police do have a very difficult job but there’s no question that the scenes that we saw were very distressing,” he said during a visit to Coventry. Asked by Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, whether she had talked to Dick before the vigil for Everard, Patel said the police were “rightly operationally independent”. She said: “I had been in touch with the Metropolitan police commissioner on Friday and throughout the weekend, and we have had extensive discussions in terms of planning, preparation, for the vigil at the weekend.” Given the fact that on Friday, organisers of the vigil were engaged in a court case over the legality of the event, police were working on “various plans” for it, Patel said. She added: “I will be very clear, though, that on Friday, my views were known, and they were based on the fact that people who wanted to pay tribute, obviously within the locality, bearing in mind we are in a pandemic, we cannot forget that, that people who live locally, clearly who were out on a daily basis, passing through, laying flowers is absolutely the right thing to do, and we saw many people doing that.” In a separate statement, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said he had met organisers of Reclaim These Streets, saying he “listened to, and share, their concerns about the policing decisions made in the run-up to and during the vigil”. Khan also expressed worry about the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, saying it was “more focused on statues than women”. Dick’s position seemed to be in jeopardy after she was was publicly rebuked by both Patel and Khan. But Anna Birley, from Reclaim These Streets, said the group was not calling for Dick to go. In the Commons, Thomas-Symonds challenged Patel on the bill, saying it mentioned the word “memorial” eight times and “women” not at all. Elements were drafted after Black Lives Matter protests last year, which prompted a debate about the role of statues of people involved in slavery and colonialism. Responding to Thomas-Symonds, Patel argued that as a criminal law and sentencing bill, it dealt with all potential victims of crime, and so there was no need for it to mention women specifically. Wayne Couzens, a serving Met officer, has been charged with the kidnap and murder of Everard, who was walking home from a friend’s house when she disappeared. On Monday, peers voted in favour of an amendment to the domestic violence bill that would create a register of stalkers and abusers, which government sources have hinted they could adopt when it returns to the Commons. Labour peer Janet Royall said it was the result of victims campaigning for many years. “Women are tired of domestic abuse and stalking being considered a ‘women’s issue’, and we have spent years being told to change our behaviour. The culture of misogyny has to change and our amendment will now focus attention instead on perpetrators – on the men who commit the vile offences.”