The Metropolitan Police Commissioner told the New Statesman magazine that wages for police recruits had fallen to dangerously low levels.

"If you're not paying your police officers a wage they can live on, you are almost inviting them to indulge in malpractice," he said, describing his own wages as "peanuts".

"It's getting tougher and tougher for young police officers to make ends meet. That doesn't mean they all go off and do bad things, but if you're serious about integrity you must make sure there is a reasonable level of pay and conditions that ... doesn't tempt them into malpractice."

Sir Paul, who said he been on the verge of resigning "several times" in the wake of the controversy over murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, said he had been living as "a pauper for 30 years as a public servant".

'No justification for corruption'

But human rights organisations said poor wages were no excuse for poor behaviour within the police force.

The Director of Liberty, John Wadham, director of Liberty, said: "It would be a shocking world if the only way in which we could ensure honesty was to pay our police so much that they were rich enough never to be bribed."

Suresh Grover, from the Stephen Lawrence family campaign, said: "Low pay can never be a justification for corrupt practices within a public service."

New recruits to the police force are paid £16,000, with no extra allowance for living in the capital.

Scotland Yard would not disclose how much the commissioner is paid but the figure was reported to be about £95,000 several years ago.

Sir Paul did have some support for his comments.

Paul Whitehouse, Chief Constable of Sussex Police and chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers' personnel management committee, said: "Whatever the economic climate, it is important for society that police pay is not allowed to fall further if the right calibre of people are to be attracted to a service whose duties are becoming more complex and demanding at all levels of seniority."

On the brink of resignation

Sir Paul also told the magazine he had fought off the urge to resign amid mounting criticism of the force because he felt he had a "duty of honour" to see through both the Lawrence tragedy and a drive against corrupt officers which he has set in motion.

He told the magazine: "During this year, I have thought several times: will it be a greater service to go rather than stay? But always when I weighed it up, it seemed to me that it would be cowardly to slink away.

"It would have eased my personal trauma and all the angst for my family, but it would have felt cowardly rather than noble to go at that point."