Lord Stevens demands apology for Al Fayed allegations 'that he failed to properly investigate Diana's death'

The former Scotland Yard chief led the three-year Operation Paget inquiry which concluded that Diana and Dodi Fayed died in a car accident.

However, following a concerted campaign by Dodi's father Mohamed Al Fayed, an inquest is now re-examining the circumstances around their deaths in 1997.

Addressing one of the main criticisms against him, Lord Stevens yesterday angrily denied "deliberately misleading" the elderly parents of chauffeur Henri Paul about how much their son had had to drink on that night.

"That's outrageous and I'm looking for an apology in relation to that," he told the inquest at the High Court.

He did not name anyone but looked at Mohamed Al Fayed's legal team as he spoke.

Asked if he had been "got at by the establishment"' to change his view on how much Mr Paul drank, he said: "That is not the case.

"The reason Mr Mohamed Al Fayed wanted me to do this investigation, supported by others, is because of the investigations in Northern Ireland where my integrity has been everything to me, as it has been for my 45 years in policing.

"To think that I would even contemplate that and take a team of 14 or 15 officers, the whole French investigation along with that, is absolutely absurd and crazy.

"Allegations trip off people's tongues. It is just not right."

Lord Stevens said he had been aware of a newspaper report from the time of the crash that claimed Henri Paul had been as "drunk as a pig".

He said it was agreed that Operation Paget would not reflect this view but would say Mr Paul was "under the influence" of alcohol.

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Henri Paul's parents Jean and Gisele have said that Lord Stevens reassured them during a meeting in Paris in 2006 that their son was not drunk on the night of his death.

A few weeks later, Stevens's Operation Paget inquiry found that the chauffeur was three times over the French drink-drive limit.

Explaining the apparent discrepancy, Lord Stevens said Mr Paul had not fitted a test of drunkenness used by the police - which looked for slurred speech, glazed eyes and an unsteadiness on the feet.

He said the evidence was that Mr Paul had drunk two Ricards but added: "Even (Henri Paul's parents) accepted - and it is very difficult for them to do that - that he probably would have had drinks between when he had left duty and when he had been called back by whoever's instructions."

Lord Stevens also flatly rejected suggestions that he had withheld a note written by Diana's solicitor Lord Mishcon from the investigation.

The "Mishcon note" was an account of a 1995 meeting at which Diana predicted that she would be murdered in a staged car crash.

He told Michael Mansfield QC, for Mr Al Fayed, there was no deliberate attempt to keep the note away from the then coroner Michael Burgess.

He added: "The allegations were threefold - one, that we were either negligent, two, that we had not done the job properly, or three, which was the extraordinary accusation that I had been got at in terms of what the evidence was, in terms of how the report was going to be put forward. Quite outrageous."

Mr Fayed believes Diana and his son were killed by the secret services because she was carrying Dodi's child and they were about to announce their engagement.

He is due to give evidence to the inquest on Monday.

• Mohamed Al Fayed's former director of security yesterday admitted lying over how much he knew about Henri Paul's alcohol intake on the night of the crash.

John Macnamara, a retired Metropolitan Police detective chief superintendent, discovered from bar records that Mr Paul had consumed two Ricards.

But the inquest heard that he failed to mention his discovery on a U.S. television programme on September 10, 1997.

He said at the time that Mr Paul drank pineapple juice and "nothing else" but admitted yesterday that he had lied.

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, also demanded to know why Mr Macnamara had not apologised to the only survivor of the crash, Trevor Rees, for branding him a "mouthpiece" of the security services.

Mr Macnamara, who has since retracted the statement, said he had "not seen" Mr Rees Jones.