Protecting Britain from terrorist attack

Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy will be meeting this week to try to develop a consensus about new anti-terrorism legislation.

And the Home Secretary is now planning to join them - Charles Clarke has had to abandon departing on a family holiday following reports in today's newspapers that he had booked to go away this week.

Regrettable for him though it must be, Mr Clarke's holiday is one of the more trivial casualties of the past seventeen days in which suicide bombers have massacred more than fifty people and the police have shot dead an innocent Brazilian electrician by pumping five bullets into him at point blank range.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair today resisted calls for a rethink of the police's shoot to kill policy and Ministers have asked people to be understanding about the enormous pressure on officers when dealing with the threat of suicide bombers. The man's family called the police stupid and incompetent.

John Denham is the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen

Andrew Rawnsley spoke to John Denham, former Minister for policing whose now the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

After the shooting of an innocent man, should there now be an urgent review of police procedures?