Capital punishment claim 'absurd'

Mr Menezes' death is the subject of an independent inquiry

The home secretary has described as "absurd" claims the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes amounted to a form of "capital punishment".

Mr Menezes was shot dead by mistake at Stockwell tube station the day after the failed 21 July bombings in London.

Labour's Ann Cryer said MPs had voted against capital punishment and been unaware of "a policy under certain circumstances deliberately to kill".

But Charles Clarke said: "I think that comparison is completely absurd."

The shoot to kill policy simply does not exist - there is no such thing Charles Clarke

Mrs Cryer, a member of the influential Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said capital punishment had been outlawed in the UK since MP Sydney Silverman introduced a Private Members' Bill to suspend it in 1965.

"Time again from Sydney Silverman onwards, the democratically elected MPs in this country have voted against capital punishment, yet it was completely unknown to us in Parliament that we had a policy under certain circumstances deliberately to kill," she said.

"I couldn't believe it when I found out that was such a policy."

Suicide bombers

Mr Clarke replying to those comments on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said: "The shoot to kill policy simply does not exist - there is no such thing."

There was also not a policy "that is designed to punish anybody", he said.

The police in this country, like those across the world, had to wrestle with the problem of how to deal with suicide bombers in such circumstances, he said.

There were also other circumstances in which the police were authorised to use firearms to protect people and police officers, he added.

"But to describe these things as shoot to kill policies is in my opinion completely wrong."