THERE will not be a public inquiry into the July 7 London bombings, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke has decided.

Instead, a senior civil servant will compile a narrative on the attacks from evidence already collected by the police, the security services and two House of Commons select committees.

Mr Clarke believes an independent inquiry would also duplicate much work that has been carried out by MPs. Ministers also felt that it would divert attention and resources away from more pressing security and community issues.

A Home Office spokesman said last night: “The Government is not proposing to hold a public inquiry into the events of July 7. The Home Secretary is currently considering what materials he might be able to make available to support the parliamentary inquiries which are under way into the various aspects of the July 7 atrocities.

“We hope to announce details of this in due course.” MI5 is understood to have compiled a detailed picture of the influences thought to have been exerted on the bombers, and their motivations.

The security services have also tracked the group’s overseas travel in minute detail, particularly their trips to Pakistan between 2003 and the bombings in July this year. Mr Clarke is understood to have consulted Scotland Yard on the implications of issuing the file to the public, possibly edited.

But the public inquiry decision was not welcomed by Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, who repeated demands for a full investigation. “It has to be a fully comprehensive public inquiry that will provide us the information we need as to what actually happened, how it happened and why it happened so that we will be better prepared to prevent such tragedy happening again,” he said last night.

Saba Mozakka, whose mother Behnaz died in the Piccadilly Line blast, said that it was “unacceptable” not to hold a public inquiry.

“This is not acceptable to us and the families will be campaigning for there to be a full public inquiry,” she said. “A narrative of events will not satisfy anybody. This is not something we will go away on.”

Graham Russell, whose son, Philip, died in the wreckage of the Tavistock Square bus, said he would wait before judging the decision. “If the facts come out anyway then it’s all well and good. If they don’t then they have failed the people who died.”

Patrick Mercer, the Shadow Homeland Security Minister, said that a narrative was not enough: “We need to know what the links were with the various individuals, whether they had links abroad. And also why the Government reduced the level of warning a mere five weeks before the attack.”

Fifty-two people died and nearly 700 people were injured when four suicide bombers attacked the London transport system on the morning of July 7. Intelligence has been compiled on bombers Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Hasib Hussain.

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