The fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was not a matter of malice aforethought. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is surely right to have decided that there are insufficient grounds to bring charges of murder or manslaughter against individual officers involved. Nevertheless, an innocent man was killed. Justice must be done, and be seen to be done. A prosecution of the Metropolitan Police Service under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, conjuring up as it does images of inspectors with clipboards in children’s playgrounds, seems wholly insufficient.

The tragedy took place on a summer day of enormously heightened tension. Two weeks after the July 7 attacks that left 52 innocent people dead and more than 700 injured, police officers were searching for four men whose plans for further carnage had failed only the day before. This does not exonerate their actions — it does not excuse the incompetence of the surveillance officer outside Mr de Menezes’s flat, for example, or the failure of radio communication that seems to have preceded his death — but it does help to provide context.

Unfortunately, the Met’s public relations performance after such a tragedy was lamentable in its clumsiness. From Sir Ian Blair’s bullish statements in the immediate aftermath, to the briefings from inside the Met about Mr de Menezes’s background and allegedly suspicious behaviour, to the apparent doctoring of the surveillance log, we have seen a series of fudges and contortions and distortions that reflect very poorly indeed upon Scotland Yard. The Met Commissioner’s later recounting of the moment that his officers told him they had shot the wrong man, with the words, “Houston, we have a problem”, was crassly insensitive. This case has been all the more easily politicised by the activists who have no real interest in Mr de Menezes and his family other than as fodder for their various broader causes.

The decision to bring a health and safety prosecution means that the report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is said to criticise strongly the surveillance operation and control room staff, will remain unpublished for even longer. That report was passed to the CPS in January. The case is unlikely to be heard for several months at least. Almost a year after the shooting, the evidence gathered by the IPCC is still under wraps. No one has been disciplined and no one has resigned. The longer that the affair drifts, the more the authorities stretch the public’s incredulity.

The Health and Safety at Work Act requires the Met to ensure that its operations do not put the public at risk. If it is found to have been negligent in this regard, it can be fined. Yet what meaning does a fine have to a body that is funded by the taxpayer? Where is the accountability?

Sir Ian will no doubt be relieved at the lawyers’ inability to frame charges of criminal negligence. He should feel, nevertheless, a huge moral weight on his shoulders. There remain very real questions about the conduct of senior police officers in this affair. A fine will not wash on its own, nor will more apologies. The police must be held accountable for their actions. Every day that passes with more confusing twists in this saga, and more delays in reaching an honourable conclusion, only causes more damage.