Britain’s most senior policeman received a vote of no confidence yesterday as he prepared for further revelations about the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The London Assembly called on the Metropolitan Police Authority to sack Sir Ian Blair after he answered questions in public for the first time on the botched security operation.

Today the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will publish its “Stockwell I” report, which formed the basis of last week’s prosecution case against the Metropolitan Police over health-and-safety failures.

The growing political row surrounding the Metropolitan Police Commissioner forced Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to endorse his leadership for the second time in a week. He insisted once again that he had no intention to resign.

Factfile: revelations from the de Menezes trial

Information about the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, on July 22, 2005, that has emerged during the trial

Multimedia

• Pictures: Jean Charles de Menezes

BACKGROUND

• Ian Blair survives no confidence vote

• Timeline: how de Menezes identity emerged

• Come quietly, Sir Ian – you’re banged to rights

• ‘It is my task to ensure that lessons are learnt’

Related Internet Links

• Download full report

Senior Whitehall sources have told The Times that the commissioner’s chances of remaining in office in the short term were being boosted by the lack of an obvious front-runner to replace him. But if the speculation over his future continues, politicians believe. he will have become a distraction from the job in hand and his position will be untenable.

If he did go, the reputation of Ms Smith, who has backed him so publicly, would be seriously damaged.

During yesterday’s meeting of the London Assembly, Sir Ian admitted that he had made mistakes but said that the calls for his resignation reflected “other forces” at work.

In one angry exchange during two hours of questioning over the shooting of Mr de Menezes at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005, he challenged a critic, saying: “I have stated my position. If you have the power to remove me, go on.”

Members of the Assembly voted 15-8 for the police authority to “take the necessary steps to bring an end to the debate on the position of the Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis, which is to the detriment of policing in London, and bring his appointment to an end. Given the lack of confidence in the commissioner’s stewardship of the Metropolitan Police Service, this assembly also calls upon Sir Ian to reconsider his position and resign.”

Were Sir Ian to lose a vote of no confidence when the authority meets, Ms Smith might find that her support of him could not continue. Yesterday she sent a letter to David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, once again stating her “full confidence” in Sir Ian.

The IPCC report will disclose the accounts of members of the public who were on the train when Mr de Menezes was shot after being mistaken for one of the suicide bombers being hunted by police the day after an attempted terrorist attack.

It will also include evidence from the officers who shot Mr de Menezes. They were not called to give evidence at the trial that concluded last week.

Sir Ian said that the Met would not appeal against the outcome of the trial, in which it was fined £175,000.

He would consider his position if there were “systematic failings”, he said at the meeting yesterday. “If one incident, however terrible, goes on of which I could not have been aware at the time, I have to make a judgment.

“It will be for others to decide whether they will invoke procedures that will remove me. I have made my position very clear.” He intended, he said, “to go on doing the job with which I have been entrusted”.

He had three options, he said: “I can resign now and walk away, I can cling on and be pushed out – or there is the one I am going to do, which is survive.”

It would be “utterly irresponsible” to leave a successor in the same danger of being driven from office by “people who do not understand the facts and have a completely different agenda”.

After yesterday’s vote Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor, felt moved to give Sir Ian their backing and criticise the assembly. Mr Jones said that the assembly had “further added to the unwise campaign to force Sir Ian from his job”. Its debate had overlooked Sir Ian’s considerable successes, he said: thanks to him and the Met, “terrorist attacks have been intercepted, dozens of terrorists brought to book and many lives have been saved”.

Mr Livingstone said: “Today’s vote by the London Assembly on the Met Commissioner shows why the Government was right to give it no powers whatever in policing.”

What they said

“Given the lack of confidence in the commissioner’s stewardship of the Metropolitan Police Service, this assembly also. . . calls upon Sir Ian to reconsider his own position and resign" London Assembly

“If one incident, however terrible, goes on of which I could not have been aware at the time, then I have to make a judgment . . . I have made that judgment. It will be for others to decide whether they will invoke procedures that will remove me. I have made my position very clear. I am to go on doing the job with which I have been entrusted" Sir Ian Blair

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