A legal document proving that Diana, Princess of Wales, feared that there was a plot to kill her in a car crash was kept secret for six years by Britain’s most senior police officers, her inquest was told yesterday.

Lord Mishcon, the Princess’s lawyer, went to Scotland Yard nearly three weeks after her death to reveal that she had held a confidential meeting with her legal team two years earlier to record her suspicions that her life was in danger.

But Sir Paul Condon, then the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, now Lord Condon of Langton Green, and Sir David Veness, then the Assistant Commissioner, Special Operations, decided not to hand Lord Mishcon’s memo listing the Princess’s concerns to French detectives, English coroners or even the Lord Chancellor.

Instead, the evidence was sat on for six years because the policemen decided the death was a “tragic accident”, Sir David told the High Court in London.

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In 2003 Lord Condon’s successor, Sir John Stevens, decided to go public with the note when Paul Burrell, the Princess’s former butler, revealed that he had a handwritten note from the Princess claiming that her husband, the Prince of Wales, was planning to kill her. It was also revealed yesterday that the Princess believed that the crown should skip a generation past the Prince of Wales to their son, William. Maggie Rae, her divorce lawyer, said that the Princess thought that the Duke of York would act as regent until Prince William was old enough to take the throne.

“I do recall her saying that on a number of occasions,” she told Nicholas Hilliard, counsel for the coroner.

Under cross-examination by Michael Mansfield, QC, for Mohamed Al Fayed, Sir David eventually admitted that the Mishcon note was “potentially relevant” to the French investigation and with “the benefit of hindsight it may have been wiser” to have considered handing it over.

Lord Mishcon had made the note after being summoned to Kensington Palace for a meeting at 4pm on October 30, 1995. The meeting was also attended by Sandra Davis, a lawyer at the Princess’s solicitor Mishcon de Reya, Ms Rae and Commander Patrick Jephson, her private secretary, at Kensington Palace.

Lord Mishcon’s note said that while he found the Princess’s concerns astonishing, he felt security measures, particularly to her car, should be increased.

“I frankly, however, couldn’t believe that what I was hearing was credible,” he wrote. However, he did record in his memo that Commander Jephson “half believed” her fears.The note revealed that, according to the Princess, a “reliable source” had tipped her off about a conspiracy “to get rid or her”.

It recorded that she believed the plan included causing “some accident in her car, such as prepared brake failure”.

Asked by Mr Mansfield why he did not immediately tell the French police investigating her death, who “needed all the help they could get”, Sir David said that he and Lord Condon had decided to “monitor” the Paris investigation, adding that the crash appeared in no way suspicious. He said had that changed they would have made it public.

“We formed a view that the various facts which had been described to us by Lord Mishcon could be addressed in the way mutually agreed and that was that we could continue to monitor the French investigation and that, if any suspicious factors arose, we would then bring that to the notice of the French authorities,” he said.

He rejected Mr Mansfield’s suggestion that suspicions should have been aroused after early reports of eye witnesses seeing the path of the Mercedes the Princess was in being blocked and a dazzling flash fired moments before the fatal impact in August 1997.

Sir David said such claims were not corroborated and there was no reason to believe the French were not doing a thorough and competent investigation.

Sir David, who left the force in 2004 and is head of security at the United Nations, added that his decision was influenced by the fact that some of the Princess’s predictions, including that the Queen was to abdicate in 1996 to give the throne to Prince Charles, had not come true.

He denied sitting on the document, something he called “safe keeping”, because he knew MI6 was involved in the car crash, adding that British agents had no hand in the Princess’s death.

Sandra Davis told the inquest that she felt sick when she heard of the fatal Paris crash. “My mind jumped to what she had said during our meeting on October 30, 1995,” she said.

She added that the Princess’s body language at the meeting suggested that she didn’t want anyone to ask who the “insider” source was, but no one thought to ask who she feared was planning to kill her.

The inquest also heard that Lord Condon advised the Queen that the Princess should not go on holiday with the Fayeds. It was the “collective wisdom” in the summer of 1997 of the then Metropolitan Police commissioner and Chief Superintendent Dai Davies, head of the Royal Protection Squad, that she should be banned from going on her first luxury trip to St Tropez.

Lord Condon is due to give evidence today, when the inquest continues.

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