Sir Ian Blair interview highlights

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, amid calls for his resignation, was asked by BBC Radio 4's Talking Politics about claims Scotland Yard resisted the launch of an independent probe into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Sir Ian said the Met Police had acted 'responsibly'

The thing that I would want to say is that of all the allegations made in the last couple of days, the matter I would most want to reject is the concept of a cover-up.

If one was going to cover something up, you wouldn't cover it up by writing a letter delivered by hand to the permanent secretary at the Home Office, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission itself.

'Unique situation'

What I actually said was, we have a unique situation here which, at that stage, I and my officers thought the dead man was a suicide bomber - he might have been one of the four we were looking for, he might have been someone else - and we are in the middle of one of the biggest counter terrorist operations; is it wise to bring in another set of investigators into the middle of that with the forensics, ballistics and explosives and so on?

I'm quite clear that we have been as responsible as we could be in a very fast-moving scenario Sir Ian Blair 'Met resisted death probe'

And secondly the IPCC has a duty, which I respect, to inform the family of everything that they find - and this is an investigation which involves secret intelligence, and where do those two things fit together? Permanent secretary would you please advise what we should do now.

We then had a series of discussions, a series of meetings in which all those people were invited and we then handed it over to the IPCC - after we had considered those points.

That's not a cover-up, that's actually a responsible action by a senior official.

As far as I am concerned we went through the appropriate processes in a unique situation.

Sir Ian was also asked about the "large number of falsehoods that seem to have been fed to the media", some which may have "wittingly or unwittingly" come from Metropolitan police sources.

I think what I would do is read out what I said on the 28th July, I have to be very careful about what's said but what we have done is to look carefully at what we, the Metropolitan Police Service actually said, or I said, about the incident.

'No confirmation'

There are a whole number of features around heavyweight coats and leaping over barriers which have never been said or confirmed by the Metropolitan Police Service - I said that in public in front of the largest bank of cameras and journalists I've ever seen.

I'm quite clear that we have been as responsible as we could be in a very fast-moving scenario and as soon as the IPCC took over we stopped talking about it.

We don't do spin - that's exactly the one thing the Metropolitan Police Service does not do is spin.

If you look even at today's papers you'll see eyewitness accounts which are connected to jumping over barriers and heavyweight coats and all the other things which are not from police officers.

The full interview will be broadcast on Saturday at 1100BST on Radio 4's Talking Politics programme