Letters to the Editor | 2 September 2006

Nothing but the truth

From Peter Clarke

Sir: Rod Liddle suggests that the public are losing confidence in the police because Scotland Yard ‘has developed a tendency, as night follows day, to change its story repeatedly and shiftily’ (‘Passengers won’t mutiny on planes if they are made to feel safe’, 26 August).

Why should I bother to change my story when Rod Liddle has already spared me the trouble? I am the only police officer who has made any public statements about the evidence uncovered in the recent case. Just for the record, I have never said, as Mr Liddle suggests, that martyrdom videos were found in a wood, that bomb-making equipment had been found in suspects’ houses, or that which had been found consisted primarily of hydrogen peroxide.

The information I gave about the case on 21 August was entirely factual — although obviously not the full story. At this stage, for sound legal reasons, I cannot say more.

So far as public confidence in the police is concerned, the Daily Telegraph YouGov poll on 25 August reports that 86 per cent of the public think the police and security service have performed well during the current emergency. This would seem to suggest that the public, if not Mr Liddle, understand and appreciate what we are doing on their behalf.

Peter Clarke
Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
New Scotland Yard, London SW1

Immigration’s real effect

From Tim Hubbard

Sir: You say that cheap labour keeps interest rates down, and so must be beneficial (Leading article, 26 August). But this analysis is so simplistic as to be meaningless, since it ignores many other economic and social factors. We must consider the effects of mass immigration on health and education infrastructure, crime, housing demand, etc.