Limited support for Met chief

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, gave his backing today to Sir Ian Blair, the beleaguered Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, launching broadsides on his behalf against both MI5 and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Political support for Sir Ian appears to be fading ahead of two IPCC reports into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician shot dead at Stockwell Tube on July 22 last year after being mistaken for a suicide bomber.

He has also come under fire for a spectacular anti-terror raid in East London ten days ago in which 250 police stormed a house in Forest Gate after a tip-off suggesting that the house was being used as a bomb factory. One man was shot during the raid, but both he and his brother have been released without charge.

Sir Ian, who has been in charge at Scotland Yard for just 16 months, received only lukewarm support from Tony McNulty, the Police Minister, yesterday after a report that the inquiry into the de Menezes shooting will disclose serious blunders and mistakes by the force. Asked whether Sir Ian could continue as Commissioner if he was strongly criticised in the two reports, Mr McNulty replied: “I think we would need to wait and see.”

The News of the World said that the IPCC would find that senior officers already knew the wrong man had been killed when Sir Ian told a news conference that the shooting was directly linked to a series of attempted suicide bombings in the capital the previous day. The paper quoted an “IPCC-linked source” as saying that there was a belief that Sir Ian had been told immediately because he was “notorious for taking bad news very badly”.

But Mr Livingstone accused the IPCC of “mishandling” its inquiry and told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “He (Sir Ian) may come in for criticism (in the reports), but he has been exonerated. He told the truth. At every stage, what he told the public was what he had been told by staff below.”

He added: “It may very well be that the staff below him knew the day before he did that they had the wrong man. But they didn’t give him that information.”

Mr Livingstone’s intervention is significant in that by law, the Met Commissioner can only be forced out by the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), 12 of whose 23 members are appointed by Mr Livingstone according to the wider composition of the London Assembly. Although the MPA is independent, the Mayor still wields great influence within it.

Len Duvall, the MPA chairman, said today that he had asked for a report on the Forest Gate raid and questioned why 250 officers had been involved. “We have a duty to explain to the public how we operate and the actions we take,” he said. “I think it is very important that we also dispel this idea that someone rings up and within 24 hours the police come through your front door.”

Mr Livingstone also attacked MI5 after an Observer report that Scotland Yard had questioned the credibility of a tip-off from the security service before the Forest Gate raid on June 2. The newspaper said that senior officers warned MI5 that they had serious reservations about the source of the intelligence only hours before the pre-dawn raid.

It said that that the reservations were passed up the chain of command to senior officials in the office of Sir Richard Mottram, the Government’s security and intelligence co-ordinator. The police were ordered to go in despite their concerns.

Mr Livingstone told the BBC: “This is very worrying indeed, because I think Londoners are prepared to accept that the Commissioner of Police has the right to initiate these sorts of raids, has the power and responsibility.

“We have always worked on the basis that they are free from political interference. I can’t tell Sir Ian Blair what to do. He has complete operational freedom.

“If we are now to be told that when the police have doubts about a raid, someone in the Cabinet Office can overrule them and effectively send them in, then this is very worrying indeed.”

He added: “I have great confidence in the Metropolitan Police. I was deeply critical of them 25 years ago. I recognise that the force has been transformed first by Sir John Stevens and now by Sir Ian Blair.

“I don’t have the same confidence in MI5. I remember the bad old days when they were tapping my phone and Tony Benn’s and everybody else’s.

“Edward Heath, when he was Prime Minister, said the problem with MI5 was that they see someone on the train reading the Daily Mirror and they think they are a dangerous subversive and they have to follow them.

“I just hope that they are not making the same mistakes they made with the British Left 25 years ago with the British Muslim community today.”

Whether Mr Livingstone’s backing does anything to relieve the pressure on Sir Ian remains to be seen.

Apart from the de Menezes killing, the IPCC is also investigating the shooting of Abdul Kahar Kalam at Forest Gate. Mr Kalam, 23, and his brother, Abul Koyair Kalam, 20, were released from Paddington Green Police Station on Friday.

As hundreds gathered outside Scotland Yard yesterday for a protest against “the criminalisation of the Muslim Community”, Murad Qureshi, a Labour member of the MPA, told The Times: “There seems to be a conflict there between police and MI5. That needs to be sorted out as soon as possible. We need to be seen to have our head on in the whole way we go about doing these raids from intelligence-gathering.

“We will need raids to combat potential attacks as the best preventative measure. We can’t get it wrong this spectacularly. Do we really need 250 coppers in all the gear to arrest two people in one house?”

It is still not clear when the IPCC reports into the de Menezes shooting will be published. The main report, into the overall train of events, has been completed and passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service in case any of the officers involved should face charges.

Reacing to Mr Livingstone’s attack, Nick Hardwick, the IPCC chairman, said today: “Rather than rely on speculation in newspaper reports, the public can make their judgments about the IPCC report when it is made public. It is our intention to publish the report, and that is the time for people to judge us.”

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.