Britain's top police officer put himself on a collision course with rank-and-file policemen across the country today with a series of controversial proposals including hiring ex-soldiers as specialist armed officers.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, used a speech to the Police Superintendents' Association to question many of the basic principles and practices of British policing - including the deep division between officers and staff, or those who carry warrant cards and those who do not.

His proposals included giving officers radical new powers to seize driving licences from drivers on the spot - instead of waiting for intervention from the courts - or to issue on-the-spot Asbos and curfews.

Sir Ian also questioned some of the traditional perks enjoyed by police officers, including  the "absurd" situation whereby all police officers up to a certain rank are paid extra for anti-social hours whether they actually work them or not. He also said that too many sick police officers were drawing full pay while their colleagues filled in for them.

"I have nearly 2,000 officers on recuperative or restricted duties, paid at the full rate, working alongside police staff colleagues on much lower wages, working in less onerous circumstances than their 30,000 other police colleagues [in the Met}," Sir Ian said.

"This is a very expensive process. It is dysfunctional, it is divisive and needs careful, dispassionate examination," he added. "Some of the answers may be quite painful and ... I and others recommending that this whole issue be re-examined will be accused of being heartless.

"But I think we must get to a stage where staff not injured on duty, have to receive some form of reduced payment if they are unable to undertake the full tasks of a police officer."

Sir Ian's suggestion that soldiers could be used as firearm officers is specially controversial after the shooting in London in July of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a suicide bomber the day after the failed July 21 attacks.

A Scotland Yard spokesman later said that retiring servicemen were just one group with pre-existing skills that could be hired on short-term contracts to allow police officers to focus on core policing activities. "It is absolutely not about hiring in soldiers for use on London’s streets," the spokesman said.

The Met chief said the core of his proposal was to give extra flexibility to police forces around the country - which meant giving extra pay to individual officers with extra powers such as the right to confiscate motorists' licences.

Asked if officers with such dramatic new powers would blur the line between police and magistrate, Sir Ian said: "That is a fair point. But in a very mobile society is that blurring legitimate as long as it’s time-limited and with extra training?

"There is something here about making justice more immediately apparent - not only to the offender but also to the society that offender is irritating."

He said that it was unsatisfactory, for example, that a disqualified driver could be arrested and released and immediately get back in a car. In such cases, officers should be able to seize the offenders’ vehicles, he said.

"I think these are discussions that we have to have without turning the place into a police state, which would be unfortunate," Sir Ian said.

The Commissioner said: "It seems to me that the way some anti-social activities can be very difficult to deal with through the normal criminal justice system because it takes so long. In the same way that we’ve developed officers with lesser amounts of powers maybe we should develop officers with more powers so they can instantly do things.

"Instead of saying to a driver ’We will report you for proceedings to be considered by a court’ we say ’Sorry, your driving licence is now gone and in 14 days it will come up before the court’. That is a much more effective issue.

"But we have to be careful about this. It don’t want to see this as a massive widening of powers. It is to deal with some very specific issues. That is why I’m raising this debate."

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