BRITAIN’S most senior policeman said yesterday that the coverage of Ian Huntley’s murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham was proof that the media were “institutionally racist”.

“If we look at the murders in Soham almost nobody can understand why that dreadful story became the biggest story in Britain,” Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said.

In contrast, stories about black or Asian victims were relegated to a mention deep inside the newspapers.

Sir Ian, who had been speaking to the Metropolitan Police Authority, said afterwards that the Soham murders were “a dreadful crime and no one would suggest anything else. There are other dreadful crimes which don’t become the greatest story in Britain . . .

“What I was expressing was that sometimes something about a crime strikes the national consciousness and it is difficult to interpret why, why that one and not the other one.

“The thing about race and gender is very clear in the way things are reported, but the other thing I was raising is why a particular crime strikes at the national psyche and we have to respond to that public concern.

“There are lots of murders of people that do not get that kind of coverage — sometimes they do, sometimes they just don’t. Putting it bluntly, it is a quiet news day, it’s August, these things can blow up.”

His comments to the authority were condemned by Liberal Democrat and Conservative police spokesmen, who demanded an immediate apology. The commissioner, who reaches his first year in office next week, is already under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission for comments after the shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes last year.

Last night Richard Barnes, the Tory leader on the authority, said that he would see Sir Ian today to demand that he make a public apology. “I just find it almost disgusting. He can’t make off-the-cuff remarks like that. It advances no case and is irrelevant to the question being answered.”

The commissioner made his remarks while explaining how police resources were deployed in murder investigations. He said: “The difference is how they are reported. I think on a number of occasions that I actually believe that the media is guilty of institutional racism in the way they report deaths.”

He said that the murder of Tom ap Rhys Price, the white City lawyer stabbed near his home in North London, was a “terrible” case, but he compared it with the killing of an Asian man by two car thieves in East London, a black woman chopped to pieces in South London and a black man shot in North London. “They [the black and Asian victims] get a paragraph on page 97. Reporting of murders in minority communities is not of interest to the mainstream media.”

He went on: “With one or two exceptions, clearly Damilola Taylor was one, the reporting of murder in minority communities appears not to interest the mainstream media.”

Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, both aged 10, were murdered by Huntley in August 2002. Police were later criticised for their handling of the search for the girls, failings over the vetting of Huntley for his job and over intelligence that showed his history of sex assaults on young girls.

Lynne Featherstone, MP, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said last night: “It is not clear whether Sir Ian’s comments are based on reality or perception.” She said that the media had publicised many murders of blacks and Asians, including Damilola Taylor, Stephen Lawrence and Anthony Walker.

“I’m sure that if the Soham murders had involved two black girls, the coverage would have been just as intense.”

In Soham, John Powley, a county councillor, said that no one should minimise the horror of the story, which got worldwide media attention.

Dee Edwards, from the campaign group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said that Sir Ian’s remarks were “unfortunate”.

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