SCOTLAND YARD was in turmoil last night after senior police officials criticised its new boss and admitted its handling of the arrest of a Tory MP had been “catastrophic”.

David Blunkett, the former home secretary, called on the cabinet to review the procedures that led to the police raids on Damian Green’s home and Commons office.

As the political storm grew, MPs and civil liberties groups questioned the role of Sir Paul Stephenson, who took temporary charge of the Metropolitan police when Sir Ian Blair left office last week. Stephenson was regarded as the favourite to succeed Blair, but one senior police officer described him yesterday as “easy meat”.

A senior official on the Metropolitan Police Authority, the Met’s watchdog, said his oversight of the police inquiry into the leak of sensitive Whitehall documents to Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, raised important questions about his judgment and cast doubt over his prospects.

The official said Stephenson should have told Sir David Normington, the Home Office permanent secretary who called in police, that leaks of nonclassified information were not a matter for a police inquiry.

Normington will chair the panel that will interview and vet applicants for the job of Met commissioner. The deadline for applications is tomorrow.

The police official said: “Why didn’t the Met just [tell the Home Office] to use discipline and misconduct rules instead of agreeing to a criminal inquiry? What this all hinges on is judgment and proportionality. Sir Paul has got a huge problem with this.

“This is a big problem for the Met. They have managed to get every main political party and everyone in the media against them. For the Met it’s catastrophic. I think this could damage Sir Paul’s prospects.”

The pressure on Stephenson grew as it emerged that the raids had not been approved by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer. A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide whether Green should face criminal charges, said Starmer had been told about the arrest only shortly before detectives moved in last Thursday.

Calling for a review of “operational methodology in the light of Damian Green’s arrest”, Blunkett said it also “would be prudent for the cabinet to consider reviewing the process by which the police have access to the offices and confidential material of MPs. It’s clear that whatever process is currently in place is not sufficiently robust to give confidence either to MPs themselves, their constituents or the wider community”.

The civil servant said to have given Green the leaked Home Office documents was named last night as Chris Galley, who worked in the private office of the home secretary, Jacqui Smith. Speculation was rife in Westminster that his conversations with Green had been bugged by police. The Home Office insisted Smith had not known of the impending arrest and had not signed any warrant to tap Green’s phone calls.

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