CCTV footage recovered from the scene of the shooting by police of Jean Charles de Menezes has proved to be "crucial" to the inquiry into his death, the inquiry head said tonight.

Nick Hardwick, chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), said he was confident his team now had all the relevant CCTV from Stockwell Tube Station and that there was "no reason" to believe any had been deliberately withheld.

However he said tonight that the delay between the shooting and the IPCC taking on the investigation had been a "cause for concern" that his organisation would have to address.

Speaking after a meeting with a delegation of senior Brazilian officials, Mr Hardwick said he was not aware of any "missing" information about the incident on July 22.

He confirmed that the issue of the CCTV was something that the Brazilian officials had asked about.

"I am confident that we have all the CCTV footage but as I have said on many occasions, we are not going to believe anything until we have independently verified it," he said.

"Some of the CCTV footage we have had has been crucial to the investigation. I have seen it and it is very helpful. I have no reason to believe that anything has been withheld."

However Mr Hardwick declined to definitively clarify whether there was any CCTV film from the platform at Stockwell Station which would show Mr de Menezes’s last moments.

It has been variously reported that the platform cameras were either not working or that the tapes had been removed - claims denied by transport forces.

Asked tonight whether the footage did exist, Mr Hardwick said: "I am not going to go through a detailed list of all the evidence we have got or not got. At the moment we are still establishing some of that."

He said the meeting with the Brazilians had been "constructive" and that his team had been able to give them a "full account" of the progress of the IPCC investigation.

Mr Hardwick said he had told the delegation that the first people to see much of the material they had obtained about the shooting would be Mr de Menezes’s family.

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