Cobra, the Government committee which meets to deal with national crises, is cumbersome, bureaucratic and overly political, according to one insider.

Andy Hayman, who headed Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism operations, states in a new book that Cobra "is a nonsensical system that drags people away from the serious job in hand to attend a crisis meeting".

Mr Hayman attended Cobra meetings between 2005-07 during security emergencies that included the July 7 and July 21 London bombings, the Glasgow airport and Haymarket car bombs, a series of other terror plots and the assassination of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

But in extracts from The Terrorist Hunters published today in The Times, he says that he and other counter-terrorist practitioners were frequently frustrated by political posturing and the slow pace of Whitehall.

Mr Hayman writes: "It slows everything down, making it difficult to respond with immediacy to a crisis and can blur the lines between what’s operational and should be left to the police and other experts and what’s political.

"Political considerations tended to dominate much of the thinking and decision-making when we should have been focused on the operational response to the crisis. Some people felt it more important to make a decision that put them in a good light than one that was truly for the good of the nation.

"During the July 2007 crisis, I became increasingly frustrated with Cobra meetings. There was so much jockeying for position and politics was always close to the surface. I wondered if politicians should be making these key decisions about terrorism - would you want the chief executive of a hospital to operate on you, or the surgeon?"

He added: "Sometimes the meetings worked but more often they didn’t. People would jockey for position in front of influential ministers, squabbling over their places at the table."

The former police chief also recalls clashes with ministers including Alastair Darling, who was Transport Secretary at the time of the 7/7 attacks in 2005.

He writes: "He was on my case all the time, telling me the Underground needed to be re-opened. And I kept asking him: ‘Do you want me to secure the crime scenes and get the evidence to prosecute the terrorists, or do you want me to get the traffic moving?’"

Mr Hayman proposes an alternative arrangement where the frontline agencies - police and intelligence services in the case of a terror attack - draw up plans of action which should then be put to ministers at the Cobra gathering. He says that in practice this is what started to happen with key players meeting before a full Cobra session to work out how to proceed most efficiently.

He says: "It’s time to form a committee in which real experience is the criterion for membership – rather than that you happen to be the elected politician or his or her civil servants. We need something radically different. Leave the politicians and their cronies to get on with general policy-making: when it comes to life-and-death decisions we need a body separate from government with the real expertise and knowledge needed to deal with the crisis."

In today's Times extracts Mr Hayman also reflects on the experience of working with Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who was forced to resign from the force last year.

The former officer says he had considered Sir Ian a friend but came to regard him as "distant and aloof". He added that at a press conference in the immediate aftermath of the Stockwell shooting he nearly fell off his chair when the Commissioner told the media that the man who had been shot dead was linked to an ongoing anti-terrorist operation.

The Cabinet Office, which convenes Cobra meetings in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A in fortified cellars beneath Whitehall, refused to comment on Mr Hayman's criticisms.

— Terrorist Hunters by Andy Hayman with Margaret Gilmore is published by Bantam Press. RRP £18.99 and offer price £17.09. Books First: 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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